Copyright (c) 2019 The Abelian Project.
Portions Copyright (c) 2014-2019 The Monero Project.
Portions Copyright (c) 2012-2013 The Cryptonote developers.
- Development resources
- Vulnerability response
- Research
- Announcements
- Translations
- Build
- Coverage
- Introduction
- About this project
- Supporting the project
- License
- Contributing
- Scheduled software upgrades
- Release staging schedule and protocol
- Compiling Monero from source
- Web: www.abelianfoundation.org
- Mail: info@abelianfoundation.org
- GitLab: https://gitlab.com/abeliancoin/abelian
Abelian is a cryptocurrency platform, which aims to achieve both privacy and accountability using post-quantum cryptographic techniques. Traditional cryptocurrencies use pseudonyms and achieve limited anonymity as transactions on the cryptocurrency platforms are traceable. Some `privacy coins’ achieve a higher level of anonymity by making transactions on their platforms untraceable. Furthermore, those privacy coins also strive to hide the amount in each transaction. Accountability means that users can choose to allow a third party, such as a regulatory body, to trace their transactions and access information regarding the amount of each transaction, while at the same time, ensure that their transactions remain anonymous and untraceable to the rest of the platform.
The Abelian platform is developing and adopting well-studied cryptographic algorithms with their security being based on hard problems such as Learning With Errors (LWE), which are as hard to solve as several worst-case lattice problems, and are not known to have any efficient solution in quantum computing. The Abelian research and development group is also building new lattice-based cryptographic primitives for enhancing the efficiency, privacy and security of the Abelian cryptocurrency platform. Led by Dr. Duncan Wong, the R&D group consists of scholars from Shanghai JiaoTong University, Nanyang Technological University, University of Wollongong, and experienced Crypto & Blockchain developers from CryptoBLK.
Privacy: In Abelian, proven technologies including linkable ring signature, cryptographic commitment scheme, and zero-knowledge proof are incorporated into the design to offer users uncompromising privacy. Abelian is focusing on providing quantum-resistance and privacy with optional accountability.
Accountability: Abelian will apply a cryptographic primitive called verifiable encryption to enable and abide by regulations, such as AML and taxation policies, in the design to solve concerns from enterprises. Abelian aims to develop a post-quantum anonymous digital signature that can support optional accountability. The system allows a user to produce a digital signature that is fully anonymous to the public but can be traced by a designated authority (or a combination of several authorities) chosen by the signer. Different authorities could be designated by a signer for different types of transactions. It allows an authority to passively monitor transactions under its supervision while maintaining user privacy against other players in the system.
Quantum-safe: The privacy and accountability features of Abelian are built on Lattice-based cryptography, which enables post-quantum security. When combined with a compatible stealth address mechanism that has been developed in the project, the system will ensure security, anonymity and efficient wallet management for Abelian coin in the post-quantum era.
More information on the project can be found on the website and in the whitepaper.
Abelian is an open source project, and we encourage contributions from anyone with something to offer. For more information on contributing, please contact info@abelianfoundation.org
Decentralization: The utility of monero depends on its decentralised peer-to-peer consensus network - anyone should be able to run the monero software, validate the integrity of the blockchain, and participate in all aspects of the monero network using consumer-grade commodity hardware. Decentralization of the monero network is maintained by software development that minimizes the costs of running the monero software and inhibits the proliferation of specialized, non-commodity hardware.
This is the core implementation of Abelian. It is open source and completely free to use without restrictions, except for those specified in the license agreement below. There are no restrictions on anyone creating an alternative implementation of Abelian that uses the protocol and network in a compatible manner.
As with many development projects, the repository on GitLab is considered to be the "staging" area for the latest changes. Before changes are merged into that branch on the main repository, they are tested by individual developers in their own branches, submitted as a pull request, and then subsequently tested by contributors who focus on testing and code reviews. That having been said, the repository should be carefully considered before using it in a production environment, unless there is a patch in the repository for a particular show-stopping issue you are experiencing. It is generally a better idea to use a tagged release for stability.
Anyone is welcome to contribute to Abelian's codebase! If you have a fix or code change, feel free to submit it as a pull request directly to the "master" branch. In cases where the change is relatively small or does not affect other parts of the codebase it may be merged in immediately by any one of the collaborators. On the other hand, if the change is particularly large or complex, it is expected that it will be discussed at length either well in advance of the pull request being submitted, or even directly on the pull request.
See LICENSE.
If you want to help out, see CONTRIBUTING for a set of guidelines.
The following table summarizes the tools and libraries required to build. A
few of the libraries are also included in this repository (marked as
"Vendored"). By default, the build uses the library installed on the system,
and ignores the vendored sources. However, if no library is found installed on
the system, then the vendored source will be built and used. The vendored
sources are also used for statically-linked builds because distribution
packages often include only shared library binaries (.so) but not static
library archives (.a).
| Dep | Min. version | Vendored | Debian/Ubuntu pkg | Arch pkg | Fedora | Optional | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GCC | 4.7.3 | NO | build-essential |
base-devel |
gcc |
NO | |
| CMake | 3.5 | NO | cmake |
cmake |
cmake |
NO | |
| pkg-config | any | NO | pkg-config |
base-devel |
pkgconf |
NO | |
| Boost | 1.58 | NO | libboost-all-dev |
boost |
boost-devel |
NO | C++ libraries |
| OpenSSL | basically any | NO | libssl-dev |
openssl |
openssl-devel |
NO | sha256 sum |
| libzmq | 3.0.0 | NO | libzmq3-dev |
zeromq |
cppzmq-devel |
NO | ZeroMQ library |
| OpenPGM | ? | NO | libpgm-dev |
libpgm |
openpgm-devel |
NO | For ZeroMQ |
| libnorm[2] | ? | NO | libnorm-dev |
` | YES | For ZeroMQ | |
| libunbound | 1.4.16 | YES | libunbound-dev |
unbound |
unbound-devel |
NO | DNS resolver |
| libsodium | ? | NO | libsodium-dev |
libsodium |
libsodium-devel |
NO | cryptography |
| libunwind | any | NO | libunwind8-dev |
libunwind |
libunwind-devel |
YES | Stack traces |
| liblzma | any | NO | liblzma-dev |
xz |
xz-devel |
YES | For libunwind |
| libreadline | 6.3.0 | NO | libreadline6-dev |
readline |
readline-devel |
YES | Input editing |
| ldns | 1.6.17 | NO | libldns-dev |
ldns |
ldns-devel |
YES | SSL toolkit |
| expat | 1.1 | NO | libexpat1-dev |
expat |
expat-devel |
YES | XML parsing |
| GTest | 1.5 | YES | libgtest-dev[1] |
gtest |
gtest-devel |
YES | Test suite |
| Doxygen | any | NO | doxygen |
doxygen |
doxygen |
YES | Documentation |
| Graphviz | any | NO | graphviz |
graphviz |
graphviz |
YES | Documentation |
[1] On Debian/Ubuntu libgtest-dev only includes sources and headers. You must
build the library binary manually. This can be done with the following command sudo apt-get install libgtest-dev && cd /usr/src/gtest && sudo cmake . && sudo make && sudo mv libg* /usr/lib/
[2] libnorm-dev is needed if your zmq library was built with libnorm, and not needed otherwise
Install all dependencies at once on Debian/Ubuntu:
sudo apt update && sudo apt install build-essential cmake pkg-config libboost-all-dev libssl-dev libzmq3-dev libunbound-dev libsodium-dev libunwind8-dev liblzma-dev libreadline6-dev libldns-dev libexpat1-dev doxygen graphviz libpgm-dev
Install all dependencies at once on macOS with the provided Brewfile:
brew update && brew bundle --file=contrib/brew/Brewfile
FreeBSD one liner for required to build dependencies
pkg install git gmake cmake pkgconf boost-libs cppzmq libsodium
Clone recursively to pull-in needed submodule(s):
$ git clone --recursive https://gitlab.com/abeliancoin/abelian.git
If you already have a repo cloned, initialize and update:
$ cd abelian && git submodule init && git submodule update
Note: The command will also download and include the required Dilithium library.
https://github.com/pq-crystals/dilithium
Abelian uses the CMake build system and a top-level Makefile that invokes cmake commands as needed.
-
Install the dependencies
-
Change to the root of the source code directory, change to the most recent release branch, and build:
cd abelian makeOptional: If your machine has several cores and enough memory, enable parallel build by running
make -j<number of threads>instead ofmake. For this to be worthwhile, the machine should have one core and about 2GB of RAM available per thread.Note: If cmake can not find zmq.hpp file on macOS, installing
zmq.hppfrom https://github.com/zeromq/cppzmq to/usr/local/includeshould fix that error.Note: The instructions above will compile the most stable release of the Abelian software. If you would like to use and test the most recent software, use
git checkout master. The master branch may contain updates that are both unstable and incompatible with release software, though testing is always encouraged. -
The resulting executables can be found in
build/release/bin -
Add
PATH="$PATH:$HOME/abelian/build/release/bin"to.profile -
Run Abelian with
abeliand --detach -
Optional: build and run the test suite to verify the binaries:
make release-test
NOTE:
core_teststest may take a few hours to complete. -
Optional: to build binaries suitable for debugging:
make debug
-
Optional: to build statically-linked binaries:
make release-static
Dependencies need to be built with -fPIC. Static libraries usually aren't, so you may have to build them yourself with -fPIC. Refer to their documentation for how to build them.
-
Optional: build documentation in
doc/html(omitHAVE_DOT=YESifgraphvizis not installed):HAVE_DOT=YES doxygen Doxyfile
The build places the binary in bin/ sub-directory within the build directory
from which cmake was invoked (repository root by default). To run in
foreground:
./bin/abeliand
To list all available options, run ./bin/abeliand --help. Options can be
specified either on the command line or in a configuration file passed by the
--config-file argument. To specify an option in the configuration file, add
a line with the syntax argumentname=value, where argumentname is the name
of the argument without the leading dashes, for example log-level=1.
If you're on Mac, you may need to add the --max-concurrency 1 option to
abelian-wallet-cli, and possibly abeliand, if you get crashes refreshing.
This section contains general instructions for debugging failed installs or problems encountered with Abelian. First ensure you are running the latest version built from the GitLab repo.
We generally use the tool gdb (GNU debugger) to provide stack trace functionality, and ulimit to provide core dumps in builds which crash or segfault.
- To use
gdbin order to obtain a stack trace for a build that has stalled:
Run the build.
Once it stalls, enter the following command:
gdb /path/to/abeliand `pidof abeliand`
Type thread apply all bt within gdb in order to obtain the stack trace
- If however the core dumps or segfaults:
Enter ulimit -c unlimited on the command line to enable unlimited filesizes for core dumps
Enter echo core | sudo tee /proc/sys/kernel/core_pattern to stop cores from being hijacked by other tools
Run the build.
When it terminates with an output along the lines of "Segmentation fault (core dumped)", there should be a core dump file in the same directory as abeliand. It may be named just core, or core.xxxx with numbers appended.
You can now analyse this core dump with gdb as follows:
gdb /path/to/abeliand /path/to/dumpfile
Print the stack trace with bt
- To run abelian within gdb:
Type gdb /path/to/abeliand
Pass command-line options with --args followed by the relevant arguments
Type run to run abeliand
There are two tools available:
Configure Abelian with the -D SANITIZE=ON cmake flag, eg:
cd build/debug && cmake -D SANITIZE=ON -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug ../..You can then run the abelian tools normally. Performance will typically halve.
Install valgrind and run as valgrind /path/to/abeliand. It will be very slow.
Instructions for debugging suspected blockchain corruption as per @HYC
There is an mdb_stat command in the LMDB source that can print statistics about the database but it's not routinely built. This can be built with the following command:
cd ~/abelian/external/db_drivers/liblmdb && make
The output of mdb_stat -ea <path to blockchain dir> will indicate inconsistencies in the blocks, block_heights and block_info table.
The output of mdb_dump -s blocks <path to blockchain dir> and mdb_dump -s block_info <path to blockchain dir> is useful for indicating whether blocks and block_info contain the same keys.
These records are dumped as hex data, where the first line is the key and the second line is the data.