Rust for Bitcoiners
  • About this repo
  • Why Current Rust resources are not enough?
  • Rust for Bitcoiners: Project-Oriented Course Outline
  • bitcoin_in_rust
    • Understanding bitcoin blockchain structure and storage capabilities
    • ch1
      • design
    • ch2
      • What is mining?
      • segwit
    • ch0
      • core_lib
        • hashing
  • bitdevs
    • playgrounds
  • Preface
    • archives
      • Introduction to the Clap crate
      • one_way_functions_examples
    • module_1
      • Immutable by default
      • How to represent numbers in Rust?
      • Introduction to Pointers
      • Arrays and Slices in rust
      • Function
      • Loops in Rust
      • Can you see why Rust is best fit for Bitcoin related applications?
    • module_2
      • Data Types
      • Enums
      • Method call syntax
      • Summary
    • module_3
      • What is Box?
      • 2_syntax_sugar_and_traits
      • Linked List in Rust
    • module_4
      • Developing Software for bitcoin
      • User Interaction in Rust through command line
      • Option and Result
      • Interacting with Bitcoin node using RPC
    • module_5
      • Traits
      • Parsing json data with serde
      • Overview of bitcoin crate
    • module_6
      • What is Rc?
      • When Unique mutable borrow rule is too restrictive
      • Deref Coercion
      • memory_model
        • 0_marker_traits
    • module_7
      • Multi-tasking Computers
      • How to cordinate multiple threads
      • Counting the total number of bitcoin transactions
  • rust-for-bitcoiners-2
    • office_hour_1
    • Course plan
    • assignments
      • Implement your own hashing algorithm
        • rust_hashing_code_detailed
      • a-5
      • Assignment 6
      • Bitcoin Protocol Development - Week 8: Connecting to P2P network
        • Tips on writing with rust
  • Course Outline
    • assignments
      • Bitcoin scripting Arithmetic using Rust
  • tutorials
    • Observing the fee trends using Rust
    • Privacy concerns of a Transaction and it's implication in Coinselection
    • Building_UTXO_Set
    • JSON_serialization_with_serde
    • de_se_rialization
      • Hex encoding
      • rust-bitcoin-crate
        • Private Key using bitcoin crate
  • c_and_rust
    • day1
      • day1
    • day2
      • Lifetimes in Rust
    • day3
      • Owning references vs Borrowing References
  • rust-for-bitcoiners-1
    • day1
      • Day1 plan
    • day2
      • Day2 plan
      • Summary of 2nd Lecture
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On this page
  • How do computers communicate?
  • Why Rust is good for communications?
  1. Preface
  2. module_4

Developing Software for bitcoin

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Last updated 6 months ago

What does it mean to develop software for Bitcoin? Let's dial back and think about how Bitcoin software works.

In simplified terms, a Bitcoin node

  • Crafts a message and broadcast it to it's peers

  • Stores some messages permanently in it's file storage

Eventhough the above two points does not cover all the capabilities and features of a bitcoin node it emphasizes the fact that in a distributed system creation, reception and transmission of messages are the fundamental problems.

NOTE: Bicoin node can be written in any programming language. A node is simply a software running in a machine which follows bitcoin consensus rules. Although obvious, I believe stating this, paints a better picture of the problems that we are trying to solve.

How do computers communicate?

Like humans, computers need to agree on the semantics of communications which are called . These communication protocols are language agnostic, meaning the messages which are being transmitted should follow a well defined set of rules according to that particular protocol. In a physical sense a message is just a string of bytes and every programming language has support for arrays.

Why Rust is good for communications?

By now you are familiar with rust compiler and would've noted that Rust is very specific with types. Type safety helps in ensuring that only syntactically valid messages can be created. With the help of Result type we will be able to handle the cases where the message creation fails. A software which is written to hanlde all possible edge cases are called Robust. Rust helps in creating Robust software.

communication protocols