Bitcoin simulated network

Description

Testing Bitcoin is difficult because block times are slow, and there are not many testnet transactions.

Bitcoin simulated network allows spinning up a Dockerized Bitcoin regtest network consisting of many connected nodes. The nodes have funded wallets, and periodically send Bitcoin between each other. A random node is selected every 5 seconds to mine a block.

This allows for much more rapid development compared to using the Bitcoin testnet, expecially when testing logic related to new blocks.

Dependencies

• Docker
• Nodejs
• NPM

Usage

Install dependencies

npm install

Run nodes (first time running this will take some time because Docker needs to build the container)

node index.js

RPC exposed on port 1999

• user: rpcuser
• pw: rpcpassword

ZMQ exposed on port 29000

Troubleshooting

1. docker build --pull --no-cache --tag bitcoin-simulated-network-image:latest .
2. ./s/stop

Credit

Credit to Alexey Lunacharsky for the foundation this project was built on