Crypticle

This project is in alpha and has not yet been battle-tested.

A multi-tenant off-chain payment microservice with support for transaction sharding. Crypticle lets users convert value between blockchain tokens and pegged credit which can be efficiently spent and/or transferred between accounts within the context of a centralized service/platform. The credit is entrusted to the service provider and is pegged to the value of the underlying blockchain tokens - This credit can be used to support an unlimited rate of off-chain transactions. Any unused credit can be converted back into trustless blockchain tokens at any time.

The goal of this project is to provide a fast, simple and scalable off-chain mechanism for spending and receiving blockchain tokens. By reducing the friction involved in converting back and forth between trustless blockchain tokens and entrusted pegged credit, users can choose their level of risk exposure when it comes to their spending money.

Some potential use cases:

• Exchange
• Marketplace
• SaaS platform
• Game currency
• Centralized currency which is pegged to a cryptocurrency

After a Crypticle node has been attached to a specific Blockchain and has started accepting deposits from users, it becomes difficult for a Crypticle service provider to move away from that blockchain without violating the implicit agreement that they have with their users. Attaching services to a specific blockchain using Crypticle should therefore help to create sustainable demand for the underlying blockchain token.

Setup

Software requirements

• Node.js v11.13 or higher: https://nodejs.org/en/
• RethinkDB v2.3 or higher: https://rethinkdb.com/

Run from source

• Launch the RethinkDB server in a separate terminal (e.g. using the rethinkdb command)
• git clone [email protected]:SocketCluster/crypticle.git
• cd crypticle && npm install
• cd public && npm install ; cd ..
• cd blockchains && npm install ; cd ..
• npm start

Deploy and scale on Kubernetes from the command line

The service is designed to be deployed and scaled on a Kubernetes cluster.

Software requirements

You will need the following software installed in order to deploy to a K8s cluster:

• Node.js version 11 or higher. Download Node.js.

• docker CLI. Install Docker.

• kubectl CLI. Install Kubectl.

• If using Rancher, you will need to install the Rancher server on a remote machine of your choice; you will then be able to create your cluster from the Rancher control panel. Install Rancher.

• If using GKE, you will need the gcloud command from the Google Cloud SDK. Install Google Cloud SDK.

Deployment steps

Once you have the required software, follow these steps to deploy Crypticle to a K8s cluster (this approach works best with Rancher):

• Setup your Kubernetes cluster with multiple nodes on your provider (3 is ideal for testing).
• Get the Kubeconfig from your K8s control panel (or cloud provider) and paste it into the ~/.kube/config file on your local machine (replace the whole file content).
• Open a new terminal window/tab to make sure that kubectl has the latest environment.
• Install the crypticle CLI tool with npm install -g crypticle.
• Create your project directory with crypticle create myproject.
• Navigate to your project directory with cd myproject.
• Make sure that your production config file (e.g. blockchains/rise/config.prod.json for a Rise project) contains the correct values; this config is the one which will be used by default in the K8s cluster.
• Upload configs to your K8s cluster using kubectl create configmap crypticle-config --from-file=blockchains/rise/config.prod.json --from-file=blockchains/rise/config.dev.json (replace /rise/ with your blockchain name).
• Upload secrets to your K8s cluster with kubectl create secret generic crypticle-secret --from-literal=SECRET_SIGNUP_KEY=313e7cc1-ad75-4030-a927-6a09f39c1603 --from-literal=AUTH_KEY=15d16361-6402-41a5-8840-d2a330b8ea40 --from-literal=STORAGE_ENCRYPTION_KEY=0111394e-3b3e-4eb3-9759-21741cf055c7 --from-literal=BLOCKCHAIN_WALLET_PASSPHRASE="drastic spot aerobic web wave tourist library first scout fatal inherit arrange" (replace the values with your own).
• If your custom adapter.js file has any dependencies, make sure that they are all inside the blockchains/node_modules/ directory (to allow them to build correctly).
• Use crypticle deploy to build your Docker image containing your custom adapter logic and your config files and then deploy it to your K8s cluster.
• To access the Crypticle app (after deployment has completed), use kubectl describe ingress agc-ingress to get ingress IP addresses; you can copy and paste any of them directly into your browser's address bar.

GKE differences

• Before you execute any of the commands above, make sure that you have the gcloud command installed (see quickstart guides). Check that gcloud is installed using the gcloud -v command (it should show you a list of version numbers).
• Create a K8s cluster from your GKE control panel.
• Once your cluster is ready, go to the Clusters section and click on the Connect button next to your cluster; then run the provided gcloud container clusters ... command in your terminal.
• Follow all the deployment steps from the section above with the following differences:
  • Skip the step where you need to set the ~/.kube/config file content; the gcloud command above from GKE should take care of this automatically.
  • Instead of crypticle deploy, use crypticle deploy --gke (this will cause .yaml files from the kubernetes/gke/ directory to override those in the main kubernetes/ directory).
  • To access the Crypticle app (after deployment has completed), go to the Services & Ingress section and click on the link from the ingress-nginx service.

Scaling on K8s

You can scale any Deployment or the RethinkDB StatefulSet using standard kubectl scale ... --replicas=... commands. Be very careful when scaling down the RethinkDB StatefulSet as this may cause data loss if the underlying persistent volumes are removed.

Sharding transaction processing in the database

The RethinkDB admin control panel lets you shard any table at the click of a button. After you've scaled your rethinkdb service to multiple hosts, you will be able to increase the number of shards for the Transaction table.

Contributions

This software is distributed under the AGPL-3.0 license. You are free to use and distribute the code so long as the code which uses or is derived from this project is made public under the same license. If you want to make a contribution to Crypticle then you must grant the Crytpicle project owners the right to use and redistribute your contributed code, content or media under any license. In addition to the main AGPL-3.0 license, the Crypticle project owners reserve the right to distribute Crypticle (along with contributions made by any third parties) under alternate licenses for commercial purposes.

Enterprise licenses

If the terms of the AGPL-3.0 license are not suitable for your use case, please contact a Crypticle project owner to discuss alternative options.