tianhao-li/blockchain_simulator

A blockchain simulator in Python and Flask.

Blockchain_Simulator

A blockchain simulator in Python and Flask.

Introduction & Goal

Blockchain is a digital ledger that is distributed among the nodes of a peer-to-peer network. This solution to Byzantine Failures requires maintaining a global public append-only log. Each block in the blockchain contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp, and transaction data (generally represented as a Merkle tree, where data nodes are represented by leaves).

This project implemented my own version of blockchain. This goal required implementing a basic abstract representation of blockchain and basic algorithms and operations in blockchain. This goal is broke down into the following smaller goals:

1. Construct representation of blockchain
2. Implement basic operations, Proof of Work algorithm and Consensus algorithm
3. Map endpoints to functions via Flask for testing using HTTP requests (using Postman)

Project Structure

The specific structure of a block in the project is:

Here each block is connected via the previous_hash field, and the proof field is the nouce computed by a node that solves the hashing problem.

The project includes the following parts:

• blockchain.py -- the abstract representation of our blockchain, contains fields of a blockchain and the basic operations and algorithms(e.g. Proof of Work Algorithm, Consensus Algorithm)
• app.py -- all the end points in the Flask application, for running and testing the application
• server.py -- attempt for DNS server in the blockchain