Plutus Platform for Cardano

This repository contains the various components and some documentation for the Plutus Platform, providing smart contract functionality for the Cardano blockchain.

Building

default.nix defines a package set containing all the packages in this repository. These can be built directly. For example:

nix build -f default.nix localPackages.language-plutus-core

The Plutus Core specification is also built this way, as the attribute docs.plutus-core-spec.

Binary caches

You may wish to add the IOHK binary cache to your Nix configuration. This will speed up builds a lot, since many things will have been built already by our CI.

Put the following in /etc/nix/nix.conf, or ~/.config/nix/nix.conf if you are a trusted user (if you don't know what that means, just use /etc/nix/nix.conf):

substituters        = https://hydra.iohk.io https://cache.nixos.org/
trusted-public-keys = hydra.iohk.io:f/Ea+s+dFdN+3Y/G+FDgSq+a5NEWhJGzdjvKNGv0/EQ= cache.nixos.org-1:6NCHdD59X431o0gWypbMrAURkbJ16ZPMQFGspcDShjY=

Docs

Docs are built by hydra. The latest docs for plutus core master branch can be found at https://hydra.iohk.io/job/serokell/plutus/language-plutus-core.x86_64-linux/latest

You can also build the docs yourself locally. For example:

nix build -f default.nix localPackages.language-plutus-core.doc

Glossary

Definitions of some technical terms and names used throughout this project.

• Extended UTxO
  • The ledger model on which the Plutus Platform is based.
• On-chain code
  • Code written as part of a smart contract which executes on the chain during transaction validation.
• Off-chain code
  • Code written as part of a smart contract which executes off the chain, usually in a user's wallet.
• Plutus Core
  • A small functional programming language designed to run as on-chain code.
• Plutus IR
  • An intermediate language that compiles to Plutus Core, for use as a target language for compiler writers.
• Plutus Platform
  • The combined software support for writing smart contracts, including:
    • Libraries for writing off-chain code in Haskell.
    • Libraries for writing on-chain code in Plutus Tx.
    • Emulator support for testing smart contracts.
• Plutus Tx
  • A subset of Haskell which is compiled into Plutus Core.