Luckychain

Luckychain is a blockchain layered on top of IPFS. It uses Intel SGX capabilities of modern CPUs for Proof of Luck consensus algorithm which allows energy efficient mining. Transactions can reference arbitrary data of practically unlimited size. A new block is mined on average every 13 seconds. It is written in JavaScript and uses a NPM package which allows running JavaScript in SGX enclaves.

Check out its web interface to see it in action.

Warning: This is a prototype. Do not use it yet for anything important.

Current implementation uses mock SGX implementation without any of the security assurances of the SGX platform. Help finalizing the NPM package with full SGX support is welcome.

Build guide

This library has the following system dependencies:

• node.js (tested with v6.10.0):
  • You can install it from nodejs.org,
  • or use your system's package,
  • or Node Version Manager.
• IPFS
  • Download the prebuilt package,
  • then untar the package tar xvfz go-ipfs.tar.gz
  • and run ln -s "$(pwd)/go-ipfs/ipfs" /usr/local/bin/ipfs.

After installing the aforementioned system dependencies, install the node dependencies in the root of this repository:

$ npm install

Start

Initialize IPFS the first time:

$ ipfs init

Start the IPFS daemon:

$ ipfs daemon --enable-pubsub-experiment

Lastly, start the application:

$ npm start

Open the web interface at http://localhost:8000.

Docker

You can use Docker to run Luckychain:

docker run -d -p 4001:4001/tcp -p 4002:4002/udp -p 8000:8000/tcp --name luckychain luckychain/luckychain

Whitepaper

The whitepaper describing Proof of luck consensus protocol and Luckychain blockchain was published in SysTEX '16 Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on System Software for Trusted Execution, DOI 10.1145/3007788.3007790.

Available at:

• https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3007790
• https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.05435
• https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/249

Abstract:

In the paper, we present designs for multiple blockchain consensus primitives and a novel blockchain system, all based on the use of trusted execution environments (TEEs), such as Intel SGX-enabled CPUs. First, we show how using TEEs for existing proof of work schemes can make mining equitably distributed by preventing the use of ASICs. Next, we extend the design with proof of time and proof of ownership consensus primitives to make mining energy- and time-efficient. Further improving on these designs, we present a blockchain using a proof of luck consensus protocol. Our proof of luck blockchain uses a TEE platform's random number generation to choose a consensus leader, which offers low-latency transaction validation, deterministic confirmation time, negligible energy consumption, and equitably distributed mining. Lastly, we discuss a potential protection against up to a constant number of compromised TEEs.

You can cite it as:

@inproceedings{Milutinovic2016,
 author = {Milutinovic, Mitar and He, Warren and Wu, Howard and Kanwal, Maxinder},
 title = {Proof of Luck: An Efficient Blockchain Consensus Protocol},
 booktitle = {Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on System Software for Trusted Execution},
 series = {SysTEX '16},
 year = {2016},
 isbn = {978-1-4503-4670-2},
 location = {Trento, Italy},
 pages = {2:1--2:6},
 articleno = {2},
 numpages = {6},
 url = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/3007788.3007790},
 doi = {10.1145/3007788.3007790},
 acmid = {3007790},
 publisher = {ACM},
 address = {New York, NY, USA},
 keywords = {Blockchain, Consensus Protocol, Intel SGX, Trusted Execution Environments},
}