Introduction

Unchained is a multi-blockchain backend interface with three main goals:

1. Provide a common interface to multiple blockchains
2. Provide additional information not always accessible from the node directly
3. Provide realtime updates about blockchain transactions (pending and confirmed)

Table Of Contents

• Helpful Docs
• Project Structure
• Coin Stack Components
• Dependencies
• Notes
• Initial Setup
• Ports
• Docker-Compose Local Dev Instructions
  • Prerequisites
  • Running
• Kubernetes Local Dev Instructions
  • Docker Desktop (macOS)
  • Minikube (Linux)

Helpful Docs

• Pulumi
• Kubernetes
• OpenAPI
• TSOA

Project Structure

• packages - shared internal packages across coinstacks
• coinstacks/common - common coinstack logic to reduce duplication
• coinstacks/{coin} - coin specific logic
• **/pulumi - pulumi infrastructure logic for deployment

Coin Stack Components

• Blockchain Full Node - coin specific daemon providing historical blockchain data (ie. bitcoind, geth, etc)
• Indexer - indexes transaction and balance history by address (if not provided by the node directly)
• Ingester - ingests blockchain data providing:
  • websocket notification of any newly confirmed or pending transactions
  • stream of historical transaction history
  • additional parsing logic not provided by the indexer or node
• Common API - a REST API that provides necessary data to a client in a common format across all blockchains

Dependencies

• Node.js
  • NVM (recommended to install Node.js and npm)
• Yarn
• Docker

Notes

• The ethereum coinstack is used in all examples. If you wish to run a different coinstack, just replace ethereum with the coinstack name you wish to run
• All paths are relative to the root unchained directory (ex. unchained/{path})
• All pulumi commands should be run in a pulumi/ directory (ex. pulumi/, coinstacks/ethereum/pulumi/)

Initial Setup

• Install Node.js LTS
  • (Optional) use nvm to automatically install the node version specified in .nvmrc

    nvm use

• Install Yarn

  npm install --global yarn

• Install dependencies and build:

  yarn && yarn build

Local Networking

We use traefik as a reverse-proxy to expose all of our docker containers. Traefik is exposed at port 80. Traefik Dashboard is exposed at port 8080

Traefik routes requests based on host name. which includes the coinstack name. For Example:

• api.bitcoin.localhost
• mongo.bitcoin.localhost
• rabbit-admin.bitcoin.localhost

Docker-Compose Local Dev Instructions

Lightweight local development environment

Prerequisites

• Install docker-compose
• Copy sample env file:

  cp coinstacks/ethereum/sample.env coinstacks/ethereum/.env

• Fill out any missing environment variables

Running

• To start up the reverse proxy and hot reloading for files run from the root of the project

  docker-compose up

• To spin up a coinstack:

  • API only:

    cd coinstacks/ethereum && docker-compose up api

  • API + Ingester (more resource intensive):

    cd coinstacks/ethereum && docker-compose up

• To completely tear down the coinstack (including docker volumes):

  cd coinstacks/ethereum && docker-compose down -v

Kubernetes Local Dev Instructions

Mirrors production kubernetes environment as closely as possible

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Docker Desktop (macOS)

Minikube (Linux)