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The Basecoin Tool

In previous tutorials we learned the basics of the Basecoin CLI and how to implement a plugin. In this tutorial, we provide more details on using the Basecoin tool.

Generate a Key

Generate a key using the basecli tool:

basecli keys new mykey
ME=$(basecli keys get mykey | awk '{print $2}')

Data Directory

By default, basecoin works out of ~/.basecoin. To change this, set the BCHOME environment variable:

export BCHOME=~/.my_basecoin_data
basecoin init $ME
basecoin start

BCHOME=~/.my_basecoin_data basecoin init $ME
BCHOME=~/.my_basecoin_data basecoin start

ABCI Server

So far we have run Basecoin and Tendermint in a single process. However, since we use ABCI, we can actually run them in different processes. First, initialize them:

basecoin init $ME

This will create a single genesis.json file in ~/.basecoin with the information for both Basecoin and Tendermint.

Now, In one window, run

basecoin start --without-tendermint

and in another,

TMROOT=~/.basecoin tendermint node

You should see Tendermint start making blocks!

Alternatively, you could ignore the Tendermint details in ~/.basecoin/genesis.json and use a separate directory by running:

tendermint init
tendermint node

For more details on using tendermint, see the guide.

Keys and Genesis

In previous tutorials we used basecoin init to initialize ~/.basecoin with the default configuration. This command creates files both for Tendermint and for Basecoin, and a single genesis.json file for both of them. For more information on these files, see the guide to using Tendermint.

Now let's make our own custom Basecoin data.

First, create a new directory:

mkdir example-data

We can tell basecoin to use this directory by exporting the BCHOME environment variable:

export BCHOME=$(pwd)/example-data

If you're going to be using multiple terminal windows, make sure to add this variable to your shell startup scripts (eg. ~/.bashrc).

Now, let's create a new key:

basecli keys new foobar

The key's info can be retrieved with

basecli keys get foobar -o=json

You should get output which looks similar to the following:

{
  "name": "foobar",
  "address": "404C5003A703C7DA888C96A2E901FCE65A6869D9",
  "pubkey": {
    "type": "ed25519",
    "data": "8786B7812AB3B27892D8E14505EEFDBB609699E936F6A4871B1983F210736EEA"
  }
}

Yours will look different - each key is randomly derived. Now we can make a genesis.json file and add an account with our public key:

{
  "app_hash": "",
  "chain_id": "example-chain",
  "genesis_time": "0001-01-01T00:00:00.000Z",
  "validators": [
    {
      "amount": 10,
      "name": "",
      "pub_key": {
        "type": "ed25519",
        "data": "7B90EA87E7DC0C7145C8C48C08992BE271C7234134343E8A8E8008E617DE7B30"
      }
    }
  ],
  "app_options": {
    "accounts": [
      {
        "pub_key": {
          "type": "ed25519",
          "data": "8786B7812AB3B27892D8E14505EEFDBB609699E936F6A4871B1983F210736EEA"
        },
        "coins": [
          {
            "denom": "gold",
            "amount": 1000000000
          }
        ]
      }
    ]
  }
}

Here we've granted ourselves 1000000000 units of the gold token. Note that we've also set the chain-id to be example-chain. All transactions must therefore include the --chain-id example-chain in order to make sure they are valid for this chain. Previously, we didn't need this flag because we were using the default chain ID ("test_chain_id"). Now that we're using a custom chain, we need to specify the chain explicitly on the command line.

Note we have also left out the details of the Tendermint genesis. These are documented in the Tendermint guide.

Reset

You can reset all blockchain data by running:

basecoin unsafe_reset_all

Similarly, you can reset client data by running:

basecli reset_all

Genesis

Any required plugin initialization should be constructed using SetOption on genesis. When starting a new chain for the first time, SetOption will be called for each item the genesis file. Within genesis.json file entries are made in the format: "<plugin>/<key>", "<value>", where <plugin> is the plugin name, and <key> and <value> are the strings passed into the plugin SetOption function. This function is intended to be used to set plugin specific information such as the plugin state.

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