Quote from: Eric Voskuil
The libraries matured greatly over this period, in terms of reduced dependencies, build automation, test coverage and reporting, code and interface rationalization and clean factoring. While Libbitcoin is not an application, it exposes an extensive production-quality command line tool (Bitcoin Explorer - BX) for working with various Bitcoin primitives. It also exposes a command line full node with a high performance query interface (Bitcoin Server - BS). The roadmap consists largely of evolving the node/server to support mining and wallets. It’s a very innovative implementation, never a fork of Satoshi’s code.
While others talk about factoring the Satoshi client into independent components, this is what we have done. It’s a very significant effort, comprising over a half million lines of code, supporting Linux, macOS and Windows. The code is designed to be readable and performant. We don’t see this as a tradeoff. Many of the performance optimizations in the Satoshi client are simply unnecessary, and would be deoptimizations in Libbitcoin given the architecture. The simplified, rationalized and well-factored code base also makes it an ideal tool for education and research.
We have built a lasting and committed community, essential for others to take the dependency. I’ve managed to secure funding and custom development contracts for full time, highly-skilled independent developers. Recently Tom Pacchia, Lucas Betschart and I established the Libbitcoin Institute, a US 501(c)3 non-profit to formalize and advance this effort.
While others talk about factoring the Satoshi client into independent components, this is what we have done. It’s a very significant effort, comprising over a half million lines of code, supporting Linux, macOS and Windows. The code is designed to be readable and performant. We don’t see this as a tradeoff. Many of the performance optimizations in the Satoshi client are simply unnecessary, and would be deoptimizations in Libbitcoin given the architecture. The simplified, rationalized and well-factored code base also makes it an ideal tool for education and research.
We have built a lasting and committed community, essential for others to take the dependency. I’ve managed to secure funding and custom development contracts for full time, highly-skilled independent developers. Recently Tom Pacchia, Lucas Betschart and I established the Libbitcoin Institute, a US 501(c)3 non-profit to formalize and advance this effort.
)
