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Fedimint

Fedimint is a federated Chaumian e-cash mint backed by bitcoin with deposits and withdrawals that can occur on-chain or via Lightning.

DO NOT USE IT WITH REAL MONEY, THERE ARE MULTIPLE KNOWN SECURITY ISSUES.

Getting involved

If you want to learn more about the general idea go to fedimint.org, beyond a high level explanation you can also find links to talks and blog posts at the bottom of the page.

Visit our Telegram group for high-level discussions (no codebase questions please).

To get started with development have a look at the:

  • Developer discord - only for programming questions and discussing the codebase
  • GitHub Issues - things to fix, planned features, longer term architectural choices, etc.
  • Architecture - high-level description of the codebase and design
  • Integration tests - instructions on how to write and run the integration tests
  • Scripts - useful scripts for running the tests and federation

PRs fixing TODOs or issues are always welcome, but please discuss more involved changes in an issue first. Smaller PRs to fix typos, broken links etc. are also very welcome. Happy hacking!

Running Fedimint

Fedimint consists of three kinds of executables:

  • Federation nodes - servers who form the mint by running a consensus protocol
  • Lightning gateways - allows users send and receive over Lightning by bridging between the mint and an LN node
  • User clients - handles user communication with the mint and the gateway

Prerequisites

In order to run Fedimint you will need:

Clone and cd into the Fedimint repo:

git clone git@github.com:fedimint/fedimint.git
cd fedimint

Setting up the federation

Just run the following script, make sure not to run it inside a tmux window:

./scripts/tmuxinator.sh

which will set up a complete federation including a lightning gateway and another lightning node inside tmux. The first run can take some time since a lot of dependencies need to be built.

The first tmux screen is one big shell for you to follow the tutorial in. If you want to see the federation, bitcoind and lightningd running you can navigate to the second screen (shown below) by typing ctrl+b, n (next) and ctrl+b, p (previous). You can scroll through the terminal buffer by first typing ctrl+b, PgUp and then navigating using PgUp and PgDown. To maximize any of the panes type ctrl+b, z.

screenshot of the federation running in tmux

Using the client

Note as you run commands the mint nodes will output logging information which you can adjust by setting the RUST_LOG env variable.

The previous step has already set up an e-cash client with a funded wallet for you. If you are interested in the details take a look at scripts/pegin.sh.

You can view your client's holdings using the info command:

$ mint-client-cli info

We own 18 coins with a total value of 99000000 msat
We own 9 coins of denomination 1000000 msat
We own 9 coins of denomination 10000000 msat

The spend subcommand allows sending tokens to another client. This will select the smallest possible set of the client's coins that represents a given amount. The coins are base64 encoded and printed to stdout.

$ mint-client-cli spend 400000

AQAAAAAAAABAQg8AAA...

A receiving client can now reissue these coins to claim them and avoid double spends:

$ mint-client-cli reissue AQAAAAAAAABAQg8AAA...
$ mint-client-cli fetch

Fetched coins issuance=5b1ac4e9604...

Using the gateway

First let's have the gateway execute a peg-in so it has an ecash token balance. We can use the same pegin.sh script as before, but add an extra parameter to tell it to use the gateway:

$ ./scripts/pegin.sh 10000 1

Now we can use lightning-cli of the node where the gateway plugin is running to get our ecash token balance:

$ ln1 gw-balance
{
   "balance_msat": 10000000
}

To make an outgoing payment we generate a Lightning invoice from LN2, our non-gateway lightning node:

$ ln2 invoice 100000 test test 1m

{
   "bolt11": "lnbcrt1u1p3vdl3ds...",
   ...
}

Pay the invoice by copying the bolt11 invoice field:

$ mint-client-cli ln-pay "lnbcrt1u1p3vdl3ds..."

Confirm the invoice was paid

$ ln2 listinvoices test

{
   "invoices": [
      {
         "label": "test",
         "status": "paid",
         ...
      }
   ]
}

Create our own invoice:

$ mint-client-cli ln-invoice 1000 "description"
lnbcrt1u1p3vcp...

Have ln2 pay it:

$ ln2 pay lnbcrt1u1p3vcp...

Have mint client check that payment succeeded, fetch coins, and display new balances:

$ mint-client-cli wait-invoice lnbcrt1u1p3vcp...
$ mint-client-cli fetch
$ mint-client-cli info

Other options

There also exist some other, more experimental commands that can be explored using the --help flag:

$ mint-client-cli help

mint-client-cli 

USAGE:
    mint-client-cli <WORKDIR> <SUBCOMMAND>

ARGS:
    <WORKDIR>    

OPTIONS:
    -h, --help    Print help information

SUBCOMMANDS:
    fetch             Fetch (re-)issued coins and finalize issuance process
    help              Print this message or the help of the given subcommand(s)
    info              Display wallet info (holdings, tiers)
    ln-pay            Pay a lightning invoice via a gateway
    ln-invoice        Create a lightning invoice to receive payment via gateway
    peg-in            Issue tokens in exchange for a peg-in proof (not yet implemented, just
                          creates coins)
    peg-in-address    Generate a new peg-in address, funds sent to it can later be claimed
    peg-out           Withdraw funds from the federation
    reissue           Reissue tokens received from a third party to avoid double spends
    spend             Prepare coins to send to a third party as a payment
    wait-block-height    Wait for the fed to reach a consensus block height
    wait-invoice      Wait for incoming invoice to be paid

Contributing

Contributions are very welcome, just open an issue or PR if you see something to improve! See our other communication channels above to coordinate with other contributors!

Please note that all contributions happen under the MIT license as described below:

Developer Certificate of Origin
Version 1.1

Copyright (C) 2004, 2006 The Linux Foundation and its contributors.

Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this
license document, but changing it is not allowed.


Developer's Certificate of Origin 1.1

By making a contribution to this project, I certify that:

(a) The contribution was created in whole or in part by me and I
    have the right to submit it under the open source license
    indicated in the file; or

(b) The contribution is based upon previous work that, to the best
    of my knowledge, is covered under an appropriate open source
    license and I have the right under that license to submit that
    work with modifications, whether created in whole or in part
    by me, under the same open source license (unless I am
    permitted to submit under a different license), as indicated
    in the file; or

(c) The contribution was provided directly to me by some other
    person who certified (a), (b) or (c) and I have not modified
    it.

(d) I understand and agree that this project and the contribution
    are public and that a record of the contribution (including all
    personal information I submit with it, including my sign-off) is
    maintained indefinitely and may be redistributed consistent with
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