ABCrypto - A Blockchain and Cryptocurrency implementation in Python

A custom Blockchain implementation in Python 3. Meant for understanding the basics of the Blockchain technology.

Features:

• Blockchain (chain of data)
• Crypographic Wallets
• Block Mining (Proof-Of-Work)
• Block Hashing (asymmetric cryptography)
• Verify transactions, blocks and blockchain
• Network of Nodes
• P2P Transactions
• Share data between nodes and resolve conflicts
• Command Line Interface
• Web Interface in Vue and Vuetify
• TODO: Efficient block verification using a Merkle Tree of transaction hashes
• TODO: Dynamic mining difficulty
• TODO: Enhanced P2P networking using sockets
• TODO: Automatic network discovery
• TODO: Better consensus algorithm (like, pBFT)

Installation:

1. Install Python 3
2. Install pip:
   • Download get-pip.py to a folder on your computer.
   • Open a command prompt window and navigate to the folder containing get-pip.py.
   • Run python get-pip.py
3. Install the dependencies:
   • Run pip install -r requirements.txt
     • The dependnecies should ideally be installed in a new virtualenv for this project.
     • The requirements.txt file was generated using pip freeze > requirements.txt to get all installed packages and dependencies in the project virtualenv.

Run Blockchain:

• Start a Blockchain node as a web service with python ./node.py
  • The web server runs by default on port 4000. Use python ./node.py --port=<PortNumber> to use another port.
  • Open the web-app with the URL: http://127.0.0.1:4000
• Start a Blockchain node as a CLI (for local testing) with python ./node_cli.py