BlockChain
A minimalistic node package that allows you to build your own Blockchain
Installation
The package can be installed via Node Package Manager (npm)
use npm i blockchain-sha256 and you are good to go.
Checkout the package at npm website
Usage
The package comes with various functions to create your own blockchain and can be used in potentally any application of such setup.
Configuring the difficulty of mining
use the property powDifficulty to change the number of zeros as the prefix of the hash for a valid block
The minimalistic nature of the package allows for the difficulty to be the only configurable parameter.
Creating Blocks in the Chain
A chain is implemented as a javascript array and is to be initialized by the user.
let chain = []
Now we have a place to keep our blocks, The first ever block in the BlockChain is called a genisis block, and is special
as it has no prevous block's hash. Thus we do not add any data to it for simlicity sake (The block by default has the data of a string "Genisis Block").
generateGenesisBlock() does not take any parameters and returns the genisis block.
The 'Block' is a JavaScript Object with data and timestamp as some of the useful properties.
To add further blocks, the function addBlock(chain, data) is supposed to be used. It takes the global chain array as the first input and the data to be added to the block as next input and appends the block to the chain with the set difficulty.