Rust Blockchain Implementation

A simple blockchain implementation written in Rust, demonstrating core blockchain concepts and Rust's systems programming capabilities.

Prerequisites

• Rust (latest stable version)
• Cargo (comes with Rust)

Installation

git clone https://github.com/yourusername/rust-blockchain.git
cd rust-blockchain
cargo build

Usage

cargo run

Project Structure

rust-blockchain/
├── src/
│   ├── main.rs        # Application entry point
│   ├── block.rs       # Block implementation
│   ├── blockchain.rs  # Blockchain logic
│   └── utils.rs       # Utility functions
├── Cargo.toml         # Project dependencies
└── README.md         # This file

Features

• Basic blockchain structure
• Proof of Work consensus
• SHA-256 hashing
• Block validation
• Chain validity verification

Details

• Core Data Structures:

  • Designed and implemented the Block struct, which includes fields for block index, timestamp, data, previous block hash, a nonce, and the block's hash.

• Hashing and Cryptography:

  • Implemented the SHA-256 hashing algorithm using the sha2 crate to ensure block integrity.
  • Understood the fundamentals of cryptographic hashing and its role in blockchain technology.
  • Implemented a proof-of-work mechanism to make the block creation process computationally intensive.

• Blockchain Logic:

  • Developed core blockchain functionalities, such as block creation, linking, and validation, using the blockchain.rs module.
  • Implemented mechanisms to create the genesis block and append subsequent blocks, and to validate that the chain is correct and has not been tampered with.
  • Created functions for calculating the hash of a block, and validating a complete chain.

• Mining:

  • Implemented a basic mining algorithm, to generate new blocks according to a difficulty target.

• Modularity and Separation of Concerns:

  • Designed the project using a modular approach, separating concerns into block.rs, blockchain.rs, and mining.rs.
  • Used Rust's module system to create clear interfaces and separation of concerns.

• Logging:

  • Implemented a basic logging infrastructure using the log and env_logger crates to track the state of the blockchain and facilitate debugging.
  • Implemented proper logging using the log crate.

Future Goals:

• Implementing transaction management.
• Building a peer-to-peer networking layer.
• Adding transaction signing.
• Improving security features.
• Implementing persistence for the chain.
• Adding a CLI for the chain.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.