Build Your Own Blockchain

How to Create a Private Ethereum Blockchain from Ground-up?

Ethereum is a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts, applications that run exactly as programmed without possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third party interference. In this blog post I will take you through all the steps required in setting up a fully functioning private ethereum blockchain, inside your local network — which includes:

Setting up a private blockchain with ethereum using geth .

using . Setting up the MetaMask ethereum wallet to work with the private blockchain.

Transfer funds between multiple accounts.

Create, deploy and invoke a smart contract on the private blockchain using remix .

. Setting up ethereum block explorer over the private blockchain.

Install Geth

Go Ethereum (or geth) is one of the three original implementations (along with C++ and Python) of the ethereum protocol. It is written in Go, fully open source and licensed under the GNU LGPL v3. Go Ethereum is available either as a standalone client called geth that you can install on pretty much any operating system, or as a library that you can embed in your Go, Android or iOS projects.

To install geth on Mac OS X, we use homebrew. Homebrew installs the stuff you need that Apple didn’t. This blog assumes you have homebrew installed already, in case not check this out. Once you have homebrew installed, following commands will install geth.

brew tap ethereum/ethereum

brew install ethereum

Installing geth on Ubuntu is straightforward, you just need to use apt-get — the commands are shown below.

sudo apt-get install software-properties-common

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:thereum/ethereum

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install ethereum

For Windows, you can find the corresponding geth installation here. If you find any difficulties in any of the above installations, check this out.

Create a Miner Account

First we need to create an account for ethereum mining. This will generate a public/private key pair for you — and will be password protected. Do not lose your password, otherwise you will never be able to recover the keys. By default, keys are stored inside, <datadir>/keystore. Everything geth persists, gets written inside datadir (except for the PoW Ethash DAG). The default data directory locations are platform specific. It is always better to override the path of the datadir, and maintain your own location for your private blockchain.

Mac: ~/Library/Ethereum

Linux: ~/.ethereum

Windows: %APPDATA%\Ethereum

The Ethash DAG is stored at ~/.ethash (Mac/Linux) or %APPDATA%\Ethash (Windows) so that it can be reused by all clients.

Following command shows how to create an account, with a custom path for the datadir. Once completed, it will print your ethereum address.

geth account new --datadir <path-to-data-directory>

Example:

geth account new --datadir /path/to/data/dir

Create the Genesis Block

One ethereum blockchain differs from another by the genesis block. A blockchain starts with a genesis block and keeps building on top of it, where each block refers to the one below. In the ethereum public blockchain, the genesis block was created on July 20, 2015. To build our own blockchain, we need to create our own genesis block. Use the following command to init our private blockchain with the given genesis block.

geth -datadir <path-to-data-directory> init <path-to-genesis-block>

Example:

geth -datadir /path/to/data/dir init /path/to/genesis.json

datadir : data directory for the databases and keystore.

: data directory for the databases and keystore. init: bootstrap and initialize a new genesis block — with the provided json file.

Following shows our genesis block, used in our private blockchain — you need to save this as genesis.json and pass it to the above command.

{

"config": {

"chainId": 15,

"homesteadBlock": 0,

"eip155Block": 0,

"eip158Block": 0

},

"difficulty": "0x400",

"gasLimit": "0x2100000",

"alloc": {

"7a69b359e86893efa3d9732e4c65ced51567edd0":

{ "balance": "0x1337000000000000000000" }

}

}

chainid : this provides a way to send transactions that work on ethereum without working on ETC (ethereum classic) or the Morden testnet. EIP 155 suggests following chainid values for different networks: ethereum mainnet (1), morden /expanse mainnet (2), ropsten (3), rinkeby (4), rootstock mainnet (30), rootstock testnet (31), kovan (42), ethereum classic mainnet (61), ethereum classic testnet (62), geth private chains (1337 by default). In our example we have used 15, which is not used by any of these networks.

: this provides a way to send transactions that work on ethereum without working on ETC (ethereum classic) or the Morden testnet. EIP 155 suggests following chainid values for different networks: ethereum mainnet (1), morden /expanse mainnet (2), ropsten (3), rinkeby (4), rootstock mainnet (30), rootstock testnet (31), kovan (42), ethereum classic mainnet (61), ethereum classic testnet (62), geth private chains (1337 by default). In our example we have used 15, which is not used by any of these networks. homesteadBlock : the value 0 indicates, it is using ethereum homestead release. Homestead is the 2nd major ethereum release — and couple of days back on 16th Oct, 2017, ethereum did a hard fork to move to the byzantium release.

: the value 0 indicates, it is using ethereum homestead release. Homestead is the 2nd major ethereum release — and couple of days back on 16th Oct, 2017, ethereum did a hard fork to move to the release. eip155Block : the value 0 indicates, this block supports EIP (ethereum improvement proposal)155. EIPs describe standards for the ethereum platform, including core protocol specifications, client APIs, and contract standards.

: the value 0 indicates, this block supports EIP (ethereum improvement proposal)155. EIPs describe standards for the ethereum platform, including core protocol specifications, client APIs, and contract standards. eip158Block : the value 0 indicates, this block supports EIP (ethereum improvement proposal)158.

: the value 0 indicates, this block supports EIP (ethereum improvement proposal)158. difficulty : a value corresponding to the difficulty level applied during the nonce discovery of this block. In this blog I explain how the difficulty is calculated in ethereum, in detail.

: a value corresponding to the difficulty level applied during the discovery of this block. In this blog I explain how the is calculated in ethereum, in detail. gasLimit : gas is the internal pricing for running a transaction or contract in ethereum. Each instruction sent to the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) to process a transaction or smart contract costs a specific amount of gas. If the required amount of gas is not provided to the transaction, it will fail before completion. When you do any ethereum transaction, you specify a gas limit — that is the maximum gas all the operations corresponding to that transaction can consume. The gasLimit parameter in the block specifies, the aggregated gasLimit from all the transactions included in the block.

: gas is the internal pricing for running a transaction or contract in ethereum. Each instruction sent to the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) to process a transaction or smart contract costs a specific amount of gas. If the required amount of gas is not provided to the transaction, it will fail before completion. When you do any ethereum transaction, you specify a gas limit — that is the maximum gas all the operations corresponding to that transaction can consume. The parameter in the block specifies, the aggregated from all the transactions included in the block. alloc: this allows to pre-allocate ether to one or more accounts from the genesis block. In the above genesis block, the pre-allocation is done to the account we created at the begining.

Start Mining

All set! Now we can start mining with geth using the following command. The networkid parameter here differentiates this ethereum network from the others. All the miners who want to connect to this network, have to use the same networkid along with the same genesis block.

geth --mine --rpc --networkid <networkd-id> --datadir <path-to-data-directory>

Example:

geth --mine --rpc --networkid 1999 --datadir /path/to/data/dir

networkid: network identifier of this ethereum network. You pick a value you want. For example: olympic (0), frontier (1), morden (2), ropsten (3).

network identifier of this ethereum network. You pick a value you want. For example: (0), (1), (2), (3). mine : enables mining.

: enables mining. rpc : enables an HTTP-RPC server. Wallet applications can connect to this mining node over http.

: enables an HTTP-RPC server. Wallet applications can connect to this mining node over http. rpcaddr : specifies the HTTP-RPC server listening interface (default: “localhost”)

: specifies the HTTP-RPC server listening interface (default: “localhost”) rpcport : specifies the HTTP-RPC server listening port (default: 8545)

: specifies the HTTP-RPC server listening port (default: 8545) rpcapi: specifies the API’s offered over the HTTP-RPC interface (default: “eth,net,web3”)

--rpcapi "web3,eth"

rpccorsdomain: enables CORS by specifying a comma separated list of domains from which to accept cross origin requests. This is useful when using browser based solidity editors (remix) to deploy smart contracts or browser based wallets. For example, following will accept CORS from any domain.

--rpccorsdomain "*"

nodiscover : disables the peer discovery mechanism. None of the other nodes in the network will not be able to find your node. If you intend to have this private blockchain being used within your local network with others, do not use this parameter.

: disables the peer discovery mechanism. None of the other nodes in the network will not be able to find your node. If you intend to have this private blockchain being used within your local network with others, do not use this parameter. console: with this command we can start the mining node with an interactive javascript environment. We will learn more about this in the next section.

geth --mine --rpc --networkid 1999 --datadir /path/to/data/dir console

Attach Geth Console

Either you can start the mining node as a console — or you run the console separately and attach it to a mining node, with the attach command. The following shows how to do it, and make sure you follow the same parameter order.

geth --datadir <path-to-data-directory> attach ipc:<path-to-data-directory>/geth.ipc

Example:

geth --datadir /path/to/data/dir attach ipc:/path/to/data/dir /geth.ipc

The console connects to the mining node over ipc. ipc (inter-process communications) works on the local computer. In this case geth creates an ipc pipe (which is represented by the file <path-to-data-directory>/geth.ipc) on local computer’s filesystem — and console makes the connection to that node over ipc.

View All Accounts

Once you are connected to the geth console, you can try out the following command to list all the available accounts.

> eth.accounts

["0x7a69b359e86893efa3d9732e4c65ced51567edd0"]

View Account Balance

Following command shows how to view the balance of a given account from the geth console.

> eth.getBalance("0x7a69b359e86893efa3d9732e4c65ced51567edd0")

1.295e+21

Connect MetaMask Ethereum Wallet

MetaMask is an ethereum wallet, running as a chrome extension. It injects the ethereum web3 API into every website’s javascript context, so that those apps can read from the blockchain. MetaMask also lets the user create and manage their own identities, so when an application wants to perform a transaction and write to the blockchain, the user gets a secure interface to review the transaction, before approving or rejecting it.

To connect MetaMask to the private ethereum blockchain, we need to pick the right host name and the port. Web3 API is the ethereum javascript API implemented in web3.js. To talk to an ethereum node from a javascript application, MetaMask uses the web3.js library, which gives a convenient interface for the rpc methods. Under the hood it communicates to a local node through rpc calls. web3.js works with any ethereum node, which exposes an rpc layer. You might have noticed in the above, when we start the mining node, we can pass the parameter rpcapi to specify, which interfaces we need to expose from that node. By default, if you do not specify anything, eth,net,web3 — will be exposed.

Transfer Ether

MetaMask will create you an ethereum account — a private key and an ethereum address. Following shows you how to transfer ether from the first account you created at the very beginning to the MetaMask account, from the geth console. To transfer funds from an account, we have to use that account’s private key for the signature. To use the private key, we need to unlock it, as shown below.

> personal.unlockAccount( "0x7a69b359e86893efa3d9732e4c65ced51567edd0","password")

personal is a management API provided by geth. In addition to personal, geth also provides management APIs: admin, debug, miner and txpool. Once we unlock the account, we can define three variables in the console, for the sender, receiver and amount to be sent. The value of the sender is the ethereum address we created at the very beginning of this blog, and the value of the receiver is the ethereum address created under MetaMask.

> var sender = "0x7a69b359e86893efa3d9732e4c65ced51567edd0";

> var receiver = "0xA9f28458eE1170F285440990c196c1592D3a73f5"

> var amount = web3.toWei(1, "ether")

Following command will do the funds transfer — it refers the variables we defined above.

> eth.sendTransaction({from:sender, to:receiver, value: amount})

View Account Balance In MetaMask

Once we completed the funds transfer following the above steps, you can find the account balance in two ways. One way is directly from the MetaMask plugin, as shown below.

The other way is via the geth console, with the following command.

> eth.getBalance("0xA9f28458eE1170F285440990c196c1592D3a73f5")

1000000000000000000

Remex Solidity Editor

Solidity is the most popular programming language to write ethereum smart contracts. Remix is an IDE for solidity and has an integrated debugger and testing environment. You can access remix online editor from here. Remix can be connected to any ethereum network. To connect it to our local blockchain, make sure that you have started your mining node with the following command, with the highlighted parameter. The meaning of this parameter was discussed before. Instead of “*” (which is more open) you can also use “https://remix.ethereum.org” as the value of rpccorsdomain.

geth --mine --rpc --rpccorsdomain "*" --networkid <networkd-id> --datadir <path-to-data-directory>

To connect, remix to our private network, we need to change the Environment to Web3 Provider, under the tab Run. When you do this change, remix will prompt you to specify the Web3 Provider Endpoint — set the value http://localhost:8545. Unless you have changed the port explicitly, the default mining node will start on the port 8545.

Writing a Smart Contract

Now we are all set to write our very first smart contract to run on ethereum. Copy the following code and paste it on the remix online editor. This is a very simple smart contract — and I do not wish to do a line by line explanation. In the next blog will explain solidity in detail.

pragma solidity ^0.4.11;

contract Hello {

// a string variable

string public greeting;



// the function with the same name as the class is a constructor

function Hello(string _greeting) {

greeting = _greeting;

}



// change the greeting message

function setGreeting(string _greeting) {

greeting = _greeting;

}



// get the greeting message

function greet() constant returns (string _greeting) {

_greeting = greeting;

}

}

If you have not changed any default settings in remix, it is set to auto compile. If not you need to compile.

After compiling, when you click on the Details button, it will show you the estimated gas need to create this smart contract.

Deploying a Smart Contract

Now we can deploy our smart contract to our private blockchain. Under the Run tab, make sure you have the right ethereum account selected, and then the right gas limit is specified. You can keep gas price and value as zero.

We use an ethereum transaction, signed by the selected account above to deploy the smart contract to the blockchain. To do the signing, first we need to unlock the account, via the geth console.

> personal.unlockAccount( "0x7a69b359e86893efa3d9732e4c65ced51567edd0","password")

Now you can click on the Create button to deploy the smart contract. In our smart contract, we have a constructor which accepts a string parameter, that’s why remix shows you an input box along with the Create button. You can type some value there (within quotes, e.g: “Hi”) — or just keep it empty. You will see the following message on the geth console when you submit the smart contract for creation. Also note that, if you have not specified the right gas limit, the above will return an error.

INFO [10-19|07:31:08] Submitted contract creation fullhash=0xf5511bb9d088672ac0d3896b8590b9a3e25484300f02deecdd739c3a549ed33a contract=0x42b7E903Fb42e191a7D623cbb4b7b4330D329d78

Invoking a Smart Contract

Once you deploy the smart contract, remix UI gets changed a bit — as shown below, under the Run tab.

Now you can set some value to the setGreeting method — and click on it to invoke the smart contract. Once again, make sure that you have your account unlocked, because, to invoke a smart contract we use ethereum transactions and we need the signature of the initiator. Once done with the setGreeting method, you can invoke other methods too.

Ethereum Block Explorer

You may be familiar with etherscan, which gives a lot of insights into the ethereum public blockchain. But we cannot use it to point to our local blockchain. Ethereum block explorer even though not as feature rich as etherscan, is quite useful to find out what is going on in our local blockchain.

To setup ethereum block explorer first we need to get its source code from the following git repo.

git clone https://github.com/carsenk/explorer

Then, run the following install command from the explorer directory.

npm install

Once the installation is done, start the ethereum block explorer with the following command — and then you can access the web console from http://localhost:8000.

npm start

To connect ethereum block explorer to our local blockchain, make sure that you have started your mining node with the following command, with the highlighted parameter — the meaning of this parameter was discussed before.

geth --mine --rpc --rpccorsdomain "*" --networkid <networkd-id> --datadir <path-to-data-directory>

Update: There is a discussion on this blog on Hacker News. Please feel free to join https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15509147

Summary

In this blog post we discussed how to set up a private blockchain with ethereum using geth. Then we got MetaMask ethereum wallet to work with the private blockchain and transferred funds to the ethereum account created in MetaMask. remix online IDE was used to create, deploy and invoke a smart contract on the private blockchain. Finally we did set up ethereum block explorer over the private blockchain.