by Christopher Allen, Peter Denton, and Gorazd Kovacic
Torgap is the Blockchain Commons security and privacy architecture model for creating gaps between connected apps and microservices. It supports privacy, service anonymity, identity psuedonymity, non-correlation, censorship-resistance, and seperation-of-interests and reduces single-points-of-failure. This emerging architecture is supported by QuickConnect and Blockchain Commons' Gordian system, while our Airgapped Wallet community and our research papers are charting its future.
There are two Torgaps and a multitude of possible airgaps Airgaps in the current Gordian architecture:
In this example:
- The remote iOS Gordian Wallet app uses a Torgap to communicate with the Mac Gordian Server bitcoin full-node located at home, which confirms Bitcoin transactions.
- The remote iOS Gordian Wallet app seperately communicates through a Torgap with a Linux Spotbit server in the cloud, which aggregates bitcoin price information.
Spotbit is currently our premiere Torgap application because it demonstrates a fully functional, publicly accessible example of Torgap usage. Though Bitcoin has long provided Tor interaction as an alternative method for accessing your full node, Bitcoin pricing services have remained a security hole: you could access your node, and so spend Bitcoin, but if you ever looked up pricing information, the whole world would know you were using Bitcoin. Worse, a pricing service could reveal to an attacker every single IP address that had accessed it, putting all of those users' coins in jeopardy.
Spotbit resolves these privacy and security problems by creating a Torgap between your wallet and the pricing service, and also serves as the first example of a Gordian microservice, which can provide additional functionality to the Gordian Wallet.
The following files contain…
- Torgap FAQ — More info on what Torgaps are and why they're useful.
Quick Connect 1.0 is a specification that uses a QR-code to establish a Torgap link between a Gordian Wallet and a Bitcoin full node.
- Quick Connect 1.0 API (specification). Connectivity specs.
We hope to extend the QuickConnect in version 2.0 to support links for multiple services in one QR code: connections to services such as Bitcoin mainnet, testnet, and signet, as well as Lightning and SpotBit, offer early demos of the capapabilities supported by Quick Connect 2.0. This spec is in progress:
- Quick Connect 2.0 Requirements Discussion.
Networked Gordian services and microservices connect to the Gordian Wallet via Torgaps.
- Gordian (wallet services). A walet system built around a Torgap between the Gordian Wallet and Gordian Server.
- spotBit (online server). A Bitcoin pricing microservice.
Torgap Onion is an experiment that combines minisig Ed25519 keys with Tor to enable did:onion DID and VC services over a a Torgap.
- torgap-demo (CLI demo). A demonstration of how
torgap-sig-cli-rustcan be used to verify a signature using an onion service, and offer a DID document.- Live demo http://fscst5exmlmr262byztwz4kzhggjlzumvc2ndvgytzoucr2tkgxf7mid.onion/
- Simple onion-based W3C DID (Decentralized Identifier) Document http://fscst5exmlmr262byztwz4kzhggjlzumvc2ndvgytzoucr2tkgxf7mid.onion/.well-known/did.json.
- Linode Stackscript A Linode installer script to automate installation of your own demo server and DID document using your own torgap keys.
- torgap-sig (Rust library). A fork of
rust-minisigwith support for Tor onion v3, testbeddingdid:onion, which enables DID and VCs lookups via a Torgap. - torgap-sig-cli-rust (CLI tool). A fork of
rsign2with support for Tor onion v3, with support for Tor onion v3, testbeddingdid:onion:*, which enables DID and VCs lookups via a Torgap. - did-method-onion A very preliminary DID Method
did:onion:*for using Tor onion transport and keys for the emerging W3C Decentralized Identifier 1.0 and W3C Verifiable Credentials (VC) Data Model 1.0 standards.
Torgap Timestamps allows for OpenTimestamping run as a Tor Onion service.
- torgap-opentimestamps. StackScript installation for the Torgapped Open Timestamps.
We currently maintain the following Tor services:
- Spotbit Server: h6zwwkcivy2hjys6xpinlnz2f74dsmvltzsd4xb42vinhlcaoe7fdeqd.onion
- Spotbit Test Server: km3danfmt7aiqylbq5lhyn53zhv2hhbmkr6q5pjc64juiyuxuhcsjwyd.onion
- Tor Exit Node: 644074F47257F9A906F9AA5C6B8926C1540A1DA8
Please see individual repos for status.
Unless otherwise noted (either in this /README.md or in the file's header comments) the contents of this repository are Copyright © 2020 by Blockchain Commons, LLC, and are licensed under the spdx:BSD-2-Clause Plus Patent License.
In most cases, the authors, copyright, and license for each file reside in header comments in the source code. When it does not, we have attempted to attribute it accurately in the table below.
TorGap is a project of Blockchain Commons. We are proudly a "not-for-profit" social benefit corporation committed to open source & open development. Our work is funded entirely by donations and collaborative partnerships with people like you. Every contribution will be spent on building open tools, technologies, and techniques that sustain and advance blockchain and internet security infrastructure and promote an open web.
To financially support further development of TorGap and other projects, please consider becoming a Patron of Blockchain Commons through ongoing monthly patronage as a GitHub Sponsor. You can also support Blockchain Commons with bitcoins at our BTCPay Server.
Thanks to our project sponsors for their support of Torgap:
Blockchainbird is a free and open source software toolset with a manual to build an extra guarantee layer on existing database systems. It is free to use and adapt to your own needs. Smartphones and smart custody arranged? Then Bird gives wings to projects that are labeled as blockchain, but can in fact be implemented with databases.
We encourage public contributions through issues and pull requests! Please review CONTRIBUTING.md for details on our development process. All contributions to this repository require a GPG signed Contributor License Agreement.
The best place to talk about Blockchain Commons and its projects is in our GitHub Discussions areas.
Gordian Developer Community. For standards and open-source developers who want to talk about interoperable wallet specifications, please use the Discussions area of the Gordian Developer Community repo. This is where you talk about Gordian specifications such as Gordian Envelope, bc-shamir, Sharded Secret Key Reconstruction, and bc-ur as well as the larger Gordian Architecture, its Principles of independence, privacy, resilience, and openness, and its macro-architectural ideas such as functional partition (including airgapping, the original name of this community).
Gordian User Community. For users of the Gordian reference apps, including Gordian Coordinator, Gordian Seed Tool, Gordian Server, Gordian Wallet, and SpotBit as well as our whole series of CLI apps. This is a place to talk about bug reports and feature requests as well as to explore how our reference apps embody the Gordian Principles.
Blockchain Commons Discussions. For developers, interns, and patrons of Blockchain Commons, please use the discussions area of the Community repo to talk about general Blockchain Commons issues, the intern program, or topics other than those covered by the Gordian Developer Community or the Gordian User Community.
As an open-source, open-development community, Blockchain Commons does not have the resources to provide direct support of our projects. Please consider the discussions area as a locale where you might get answers to questions. Alternatively, please use this repository's issues feature. Unfortunately, we can not make any promises on response time.
If your company requires support to use our projects, please feel free to contact us directly about options. We may be able to offer you a contract for support from one of our contributors, or we might be able to point you to another entity who can offer the contractual support that you need.
The following people directly contributed to this repository. You can add your name here by getting involved. The first step is learning how to contribute from our CONTRIBUTING.md documentation.
| Name | Role | Github | GPG Fingerprint | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Christopher Allen | Principal Architect | @ChristopherA | <ChristopherA@LifeWithAlacrity.com> | FDFE 14A5 4ECB 30FC 5D22 74EF F8D3 6C91 3574 05ED |
| Gorazd Kovacic | Lead Researcher | @gorazdko | <gorazdko@gmail.com> | 41F0 EA16 99A7 4C1E 2FA4 1B53 8CF9 6BC3 FF9D BBCE |
We want to keep all of our software safe for everyone. If you have discovered a security vulnerability, we appreciate your help in disclosing it to us in a responsible manner. We are unfortunately not able to offer bug bounties at this time.
We do ask that you offer us good faith and use best efforts not to leak information or harm any user, their data, or our developer community. Please give us a reasonable amount of time to fix the issue before you publish it. Do not defraud our users or us in the process of discovery. We promise not to bring legal action against researchers who point out a problem provided they do their best to follow the these guidelines.
Please report suspected security vulnerabilities in private via email to ChristopherA@BlockchainCommons.com (do not use this email for support). Please do NOT create publicly viewable issues for suspected security vulnerabilities.
The following keys may be used to communicate sensitive information to developers:
| Name | Fingerprint |
|---|---|
| Christopher Allen | FDFE 14A5 4ECB 30FC 5D22 74EF F8D3 6C91 3574 05ED |
You can import a key by running the following command with that individual’s fingerprint: gpg --recv-keys "<fingerprint>" Ensure that you put quotes around fingerprints that contain spaces.