Introduction

Lightweight and easy to understand chain implementation written in Go. This project features a Proof of Work consensus mechanism, gRPC for inter-node communication and a custom gossip protocol for node discovery.

Features

• Proof of Work Consensus: Nodes calculate a nonce for a given difficulty to mine blocks.
• gRPC Communication: Nodes communicate using gRPC for efficient, language-agnostic messaging.
• Custom Gossip Protocol: A handmade gossip protocol is used for peer discovery and network resilience.
• Merkle Root Verification: Transactions are verified using Merkle trees, ensuring data integrity.
• SHA-256 Hashing: Blocks are hashed using the secure SHA-256 algorithm.
• Ed25519 Key Pairing: Public/private key cryptography is implemented using Ed25519 for secure transaction signing.
• Adjustable Difficulty: The mining difficulty can be dynamically adjusted to control block creation times.

Architecture and Design

• Block: The core data structure containing transactions, a nonce, previous block hash, and more.
• chain: The distributed ledger, storing the chain of blocks.
• Node: Each peer in the network, responsible for mining, validating, and propagating blocks.
• Gossip Protocol: Custom protocol for node discovery and message propagation.

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Go 1.22+ installed on your machine.

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/raphadam/goblock.git

2. Navigate to the project directory:

   cd goblock

3. Install dependencies:

   go mod tidy

4. Run the chain node:

   go run ./cmd