Relationship Example

An example implementation of the relationship protocol. This is not designed to scale or work in a production environment. It is simply for testing and displaying concepts of the relationship protocol.

The relationship protocol provides the ability to create a secure, verified, private communication channel on chain.

There are TODO comments in many of the places that could be done better or that have a higher than reasonable chance for failure.

Configuration

Create a configuration file based on conf/dev.env.example.

START_HASH - A recent block hash before any activity is on chain for your new key. DUST_LIMIT - Must be 576 for 1 satoshi per byte P2PK outputs used in this protocol.

NODE_ADDRESS - The IP address and port of your full bitcoin node. RPC_HOST - The IP address and port of your full bitcoin node RPC. RPC_USERNAME - Your RPC username. RPC_PASSWORD - Your RPC password.

Set the _BUCKET values to "standalone" and the _ROOT values to a local file path to use local storage. Otherwise AWS S3 storage can be configured.

COMMAND_PATH - A local file path for a file to be used to send commands from the client (CLI) to the daemon (service).

XKEY - Your root private key. Keep this secret. It can be generated in the proper format by running the command go run cmd/smartcontract/main.go gen --x from within the smart-contract repo directory.

WALLET_PATH - Is the path within your XKEY to use as the base for deriving addresses.

LOG_FILE_PATH - Is a local file path for the log output. If left blank logging will be to the terminal (stdout) only. SPYNODE_LOG_FILE_PATH - Is a local file path for the spynode specific log output. If not set then the spynode log output is put in the main log. LOG_FORMAT - Can be set to "text" for normal text logging. Leave blank for json logging.

Running

In a terminal go to the repo directory.

Set your configuration variables to the environment by running the command source <conf file>.

Run the command make run-daemon to start the daemon. Make sure to let the daemon run to sync with the chain. It should be a matter of minutes if your START_HASH is recent and your full node doesn't have latency.

In a separate terminal go to the repo directory again and set the configuration variables again.

Run commands in the client by running go run cmd/client/main.go <command>. Use -h to see available commands and <command> -h to see the additional parameters for that command.

Usage

Command descriptions

• List - lists all of the transaction IDs for relationships that you've created
• Initiate - starts a new relationship and provides the transaction id index for all further operations
• Accept - counterpart to initiate, all parties must provide their initiation, saying that they accept
• Pending Accept - partial acceptance, providing idetity information before formal acceptance
• Message - sends message to another party, given the indexed transaction id
• Receive - prints out an address P2PK used for initiating relationships (use --r)

Instructions

Setup your system as describec in "Running".

Your wallet will need funding to function. Get a bitcoin address with the receive command. Send a small amount of bitcoin to it, like 50,000 satoshis or less.

You will need one or more "relationship addresses" from other people to initiate a relationship. Get one of yours by running the command receive --r and give it to someone else.

If you have one or more relationship addresses from other people, run the command initiate <address 1> <address 2> .... This should create and send 2 transactions. One to fund your relationship address, and the other to send a relationship initiation message from that address.

Relationships are identified by the transaction ID of the relationship initiation message. You can list these by running the list command.

All members should accept the relationship before sending any messages within it. Do this by running the accept <initiation txid> command. This should also create and send a funding tx and an accept tx.

To send a message within a relationship use the command message <initiation txid> "Message text". Put the text in quotes in case there are spaces so it acts as one parameter to the command line. This should also create and send a funding tx and a message tx.

Messages currently only show up in the log file. Their contents are ASCII, but will be base64 encoded because it is technically a binary field. Copy the base64 text and paste into a base64 decoder to see the message text. There are many available free online.

Example usage

One-to-One (Sam and Curtis)

1. Curtis gives Sam P2PK address (offline) via receive
2. Sam runs initiate command with P2PK
3. Curtis sees initiate, shows TX ID**
4. Curtis runs accept with TX ID
5. Sam sees accept with TX ID
6. Sam runs accept with TX ID (redundant, but implementation detail / TODO reject?)
7. Sam message command M1, TX ID** (also implementation detail)

One-to-Many (Sam, Curtis, James)

1. Curtis and James gives Sam P2PK address (offline) via receive
2. Sam runs initiate with multiple P2PKs for all parties (index tx id)
3. Curtis and James see initiate and accept
4. Sam runs accept
5. Sam message command M1, TX ID** (also implementation detail)

Protocol