Project Aulium is a blockchain implemented in JS with support for storing arbritrary JSON data. All actions taken by users are trackable and can be verified to ensure they have not been tampered with.
Since it takes hashing capacity to run a blockchain, users may opt-in to mining for Project Aulium using either dedicated mining clients or passively mining within the browser. Mining earns Aulium, the currency used to create posts or comments.
The blocks on the Project Aulium blockchain consist out of a JSON body containing the events submitted by users, a timestamp and a nonce.
The hashes are calculated using this simple formula: sha256(index + JSON.stringify(body) + timestamp + nonce). The nonce may be any random data within an a-zA-Z0-9 charset, the default mining scripts simply use an incrementing integer with random string prefix.
Mining happens on the server itself, but slowed, to avoid situations of stuck blocks, should not enough miners be available to mine blocks. The expected frequency of blocks being created is a 3-minute interval. This interval may be extended if the block is not filled with enough events. Mining tasks are distributed using a websocket server by socket.io. The following events may happen:
Note that MINING_ASSIGNMENT_REPEAT is simply a way to get clients that have connected after a block has started mining to work too and should be ignored if MINING_ASSIGMENT_NEW_BLOCK has been processed.
Server -> Clients:
| Name | Object |
|---|---|
| MINING_ASSIGNMENT_NEW_BLOCK | { "block_data": <data>, "index": <index>, "timestamp": <timestamp>, "prevHash": <hash> } |
| MINING_ASSIGNMENT_REPEAT | { "block_data": <data>, "index": <index>, "timestamp": <timestamp>, "prevHash": <hash> } |
| MINING_ASSIGNMENT_DONE | { "index": <index> } |
| BLOCKCHAIN_NEW_BLOCK | { "block": <block> } |
Client -> Server:
| Name | Object |
|---|---|
| MINING_BLOCK_SUBMISSION | {"index": <index>, "nonce": <nonce>} |