The libbitcoin Tutorial

Welcome to the online version of The libbitcoin Tutorial, a free tutorial about the libbitcoin library for the Bitcoin cryptocurrency.

Contents:

• 1. Introduction
  • 1.1. Design
    • 1.1.1. Dependency Injection
  • 1.2. The Zen of libbitcoin
  • 1.3. Examples
• 2. Quickstart
• 3. Overview
  • 3.1. Rationale
  • 3.2. Core Concepts and Functionality
    • 3.2.1. Basic libbitcoin Anatomy
      • 3.2.1.1. Network services
      • 3.2.1.2. Blockchain services
      • 3.2.1.3. Supporting services
    • 3.2.2. Threadpools and Services
      • 3.2.2.1. Theory
      • 3.2.2.2. Practice
    • 3.2.3. Data Types
    • 3.2.4. Logging
    • 3.2.5. std::error_code
    • 3.2.6. std::bind
    • 3.2.7. std::promise and std::future
• 4. Crypto and Private Keys
  • 4.1. Vanilla Private Keys
    • 4.1.1. Show Your Bitcoin Address
  • 4.2. Deterministic Wallets
    • 4.2.1. Master Public Key
  • 4.3. Different Key Formats
    • 4.3.1. Hex-Encoded Secret
    • 4.3.2. Wallet Import Format
    • 4.3.3. Casascius Minikey
• 5. Fun With The Bitcoin Blockchain
  • 5.1. Initialization: Importing The Genesis Block
  • 5.2. Fetch and Display Block Info
  • 5.3. Message from Satoshi, Bitcoin’s creator
  • 5.4. Reconstruct Block Transactions
    • 5.4.1. fetch_block() and Composed Operations
  • 5.5. Polling Blocks From Nodes
    • 5.5.1. Reorganizations And New Blocks
  • 5.6. Optimization Techniques
• 6. Network Protocol
  • 6.1. Simple Network Application
    • 6.1.1. Accept Connections
    • 6.1.2. handshake Service
  • 6.2. Network Services
  • 6.3. Join the Peer To Peer Network
    • 6.3.1. Transaction Radar
• 7. Full Node Implementation
  • 7.1. Recap
  • 7.2. Source Code
  • 7.3. Basic Outline
  • 7.4. Unconfirmed Transactions
    • 7.4.1. Validating The Transaction
    • 7.4.2. Requesting Dependencies

Author: Amir Taaki <amir@unsystem.net>