Blockchain Analyzer

The blockchain_analyzer

• deserializes the raw bitcoin blockchain,
• imports it into a Postgres database,
• and analyzes transactions to find clusters of addresses.

Here is a high-level overview of our system architecture, to illustrate how the blockchain_analyzer interacts with the other components:

Building

• Everything: cargo build
• blk_file_reader only: cargo build -p blk_file_reader
• blockchain_analyzer only: cargo build -p blockchain_analyzer

Running

blk_file_reader

Run cargo run -p blk_file_reader -- -h to get a help text for blk_file_reader.

blockchain_analyzer

Running the blockchain_analyzer requires a little bit of configuration which is done by setting a handful of environment variables. If the variables are not set in the environment, the blockchain_analyzer tries to read them from a .env file at the path from where it was invoked. These variables are described in .env.sample.

There fore, you can simply

• make a copy of .env.sample: cp .env.sample .env
• and adapt the variables in .env to your needs.

The blockchain_analyzer can then be invoked via cargo run -p blockchain_analyzer.

Testing

Running the tests requires additional tools:

• Docker: for example Docker Community Edition.
• diesel_cli: cargo install diesel_cli --no-default-features --features postgres:

Before your run the tests, you have to:

• Spin up a Postgres DB via Docker: docker run --rm --name blockninjas_postgres -p 5432:5432 -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=test postgres
• Set up the DB via diesel_cli: diesel database reset --database-url=postgres://postgres:[email protected]:5432/bitcoin_blockchain --migration-dir=blockchain_analyzer/migrations

Then run the tests:

• Everything: cargo test
• blk_file_reader only: cargo test -p blk_file_reader
• blockchain_analyzer only: cargo test -p blockchain_analyzer