[lightwalletd](https://github.com/zcash-hackworks/lightwalletd) is a backend service that provides a bandwidth-efficient interface to the Zcash blockchain. Currently, lightwalletd supports the Sapling protocol version as its primary concern. The intended purpose of lightwalletd is to support the development of mobile-friendly shielded light wallets.
lightwalletd consists of three loosely coupled components: an "ingester", a "frontend", and an arbitrary storage layer (such as a SQL database) that connects the two. The ingester receives raw block data, parses out the transactions and block metadata, then stores them in a format convenient for the frontend to serve to clients. Thus, these components can operate and scale independently of each other and are connected only by a shared storage convention.
Lightwalletd has not yet undergone audits or been subject to rigorous testing. It lacks some affordances necessary for production-level reliability. We do not recommend using it to handle customer funds at this time (October 2019).
First, ensure [Go >= 1.11](https://golang.org/dl/#stable) is installed. Once your go environment is setup correctly, you can build/run the below components.
You will need to supply an x509 certificate that connecting clients will have good reason to trust (hint: do not use a self-signed one, our SDK will reject those unless you distribute them to the client out-of-band). We suggest that you be sure to buy a reputable one from a supplier that uses a modern hashing algorithm (NOT md5 or sha1) and that uses Certificate Transparency (OID 1.3.6.1.4.1.11129.2.4.2 will be present in the certificate).
To check a given certificate's (cert.pem) hashing algorithm:
