quorum/README.md

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Quorum

Quorum Slack

Quorum is an Ethereum-based distributed ledger protocol with transaction/contract privacy and new consensus mechanisms.

Quorum is a fork of go-ethereum and is updated in line with go-ethereum releases.

Key enhancements over go-ethereum:

  • Privacy - Quorum supports private transactions and private contracts through public/private state separation and utilising Constellation, a peer-to-peer encrypted message exchange for directed transfer of private data to network participants
  • Alternative Consensus Mechanisms - with no need for POW/POS in a permissioned network, Quorum instead offers multiple consensus mechanisms that are more appropriate for consortium chains:
    • Raft-based Consensus - a consensus model for faster blocktimes, transaction finality, and on-demand block creation
    • Istanbul BFT - a PBFT-inspired consensus algorithm with transaction finality, by AMIS.
  • Peer Permissioning - node/peer permissioning using smart contracts, ensuring only known parties can join the network
  • Higher Performance - Quorum offers significantly higher performance than public geth

Note: The QuorumChain consensus algorithm is not yet supported by this release.

Architecture

Quorum privacy architecture

The above diagram is a high-level overview of the privacy architecture used by Quorum. For more in-depth discussion of the components, refer to the wiki pages.

Quickstart

The quickest way to get started with Quorum is using VirtualBox and Vagrant:

git clone https://github.com/jpmorganchase/quorum-examples
cd quorum-examples
vagrant up
# (should take 5 or so minutes)
vagrant ssh

Now that you have a fully-functioning Quorum environment set up, let's run the 7-node cluster example. This will spin up several nodes with a mix of voters, block makers, and unprivileged nodes.

# (from within vagrant env, use `vagrant ssh` to enter)
ubuntu@ubuntu-xenial:~$ cd quorum-examples/7nodes

$ ./raft-init.sh
# (output condensed for clarity)
[*] Cleaning up temporary data directories
[*] Configuring node 1
[*] Configuring node 2 as block maker and voter
[*] Configuring node 3
[*] Configuring node 4 as voter
[*] Configuring node 5 as voter
[*] Configuring node 6
[*] Configuring node 7

$ ./raft-start.sh
[*] Starting Constellation nodes
[*] Starting bootnode... waiting... done
[*] Starting node 1
[*] Starting node 2
[*] Starting node 3
[*] Starting node 4
[*] Starting node 5
[*] Starting node 6
[*] Starting node 7
[*] Unlocking account and sending first transaction
Contract transaction send: TransactionHash: 0xbfb7bfb97ba9bacbf768e67ac8ef05e4ac6960fc1eeb6ab38247db91448b8ec6 waiting to be mined...
true

docker run -d --name ethereum-node -v /Users/alice/ethereum:/root
-p 8545:8545 -p 30303:30303
ethereum/client-go


This will start geth in fast-sync mode with a DB memory allowance of 1GB just as the above command does.  It will also create a persistent volume in your home directory for saving your blockchain as well as map the default ports. There is also an `alpine` tag available for a slim version of the image.

Do not forget `--rpcaddr 0.0.0.0`, if you want to access RPC from other containers and/or hosts. By default, `geth` binds to the local interface and RPC endpoints is not accessible from the outside.

### Programatically interfacing Geth nodes

We now have a 7-node Quorum cluster with a [private smart contract](https://github.com/jpmorganchase/quorum-examples/blob/master/examples/7nodes/script1.js) (SimpleStorage) sent from `node 1` "for" `node 7` (denoted by the public key passed via `privateFor: ["ROAZBWtSacxXQrOe3FGAqJDyJjFePR5ce4TSIzmJ0Bc="]` in the `sendTransaction` call).
As a developer, sooner rather than later you'll want to start interacting with Geth and the Ethereum
network via your own programs and not manually through the console. To aid this, Geth has built-in
support for a JSON-RPC based APIs ([standard APIs](https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/JSON-RPC) and
[Geth specific APIs](https://github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/wiki/Management-APIs)). These can be
exposed via HTTP, WebSockets and IPC (unix sockets on unix based platforms, and named pipes on Windows).

Connect to any of the nodes and inspect them using the following commands:

```sh
$ geth attach ipc:qdata/dd1/geth.ipc
$ geth attach ipc:qdata/dd2/geth.ipc
...
$ geth attach ipc:qdata/dd7/geth.ipc


# e.g.

$ geth attach ipc:qdata/dd2/geth.ipc
Welcome to the Geth JavaScript console!

instance: Geth/v1.5.0-unstable/linux/go1.7.3
coinbase: 0xca843569e3427144cead5e4d5999a3d0ccf92b8e
at block: 679 (Tue, 15 Nov 2016 00:01:05 UTC)
 datadir: /home/ubuntu/quorum-examples/7nodes/qdata/dd2
 modules: admin:1.0 debug:1.0 eth:1.0 net:1.0 personal:1.0 quorum:1.0 rpc:1.0 txpool:1.0 web3:1.0

# let's look at the private txn created earlier:
> eth.getTransaction("0xbfb7bfb97ba9bacbf768e67ac8ef05e4ac6960fc1eeb6ab38247db91448b8ec6")
{
  blockHash: "0xb6aec633ef1f79daddc071bec8a56b7099ab08ac9ff2dc2764ffb34d5a8d15f8",
  blockNumber: 1,
  from: "0xed9d02e382b34818e88b88a309c7fe71e65f419d",
  gas: 300000,
  gasPrice: 0,
  hash: "0xbfb7bfb97ba9bacbf768e67ac8ef05e4ac6960fc1eeb6ab38247db91448b8ec6",
  input: "0x9820c1a5869713757565daede6fcec57f3a6b45d659e59e72c98c531dcba9ed206fd0012c75ce72dc8b48cd079ac08536d3214b1a4043da8cea85be858b39c1d",
  nonce: 0,
  r: "0x226615349dc143a26852d91d2dff1e57b4259b576f675b06173e9972850089e7",
  s: "0x45d74765c5400c5c280dd6285a84032bdcb1de85a846e87b57e9e0cedad6c427",
  to: null,
  transactionIndex: 1,
  v: "0x25",
  value: 0
}

Note in particular the v field value of "0x25" or "0x26" (37 or 38 in decimal) which marks this transaction as having a private payload (input).

Demonstrating Privacy

Documentation detailing steps to demonstrate the privacy features of Quorum can be found in quorum-examples/7nodes/README.

Further Reading

Further documentation can be found in the docs folder and on the wiki.

See also

Third Party Tools/Libraries

The following Quorum-related libraries/applications have been created by Third Parties and as such are not specifically endorsed by J.P. Morgan. A big thanks to the developers for improving the tooling around Quorum!

Contributing

Thank you for your interest in contributing to Quorum!

Quorum is built on open source and we invite you to contribute enhancements. Upon review you will be required to complete a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) before we are able to merge. If you have any questions about the contribution process, please feel free to send an email to quorum_info@jpmorgan.com.

License

The go-ethereum library (i.e. all code outside of the cmd directory) is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0, also included in our repository in the COPYING.LESSER file.

The go-ethereum binaries (i.e. all code inside of the cmd directory) is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0, also included in our repository in the COPYING file.