gOuroboros starter kit

This starter kit is an introduction tutorial on how to use the gOuroboros library to communicate with a Cardano Node using the Ouroboros family of protocols.

The gOuroboros library is a Cardano library written in Go. It allows for communications with a Cardano Node and performing serialization of Cardano primitives without relying on external tools and binaries, facilitating the creation of single binary tools with minimal overhead.

Dev Environment

For running this starter kit you'll need access to a fully synced instance of a Cardano Node.

If you do not want to install the required components yourself, you can use the Demeter.run platform to create a cloud environment with access to common Cardano infrastructure. The following command will open this repo in a private, web-based VSCode IDE with access to a shared Cardano Node.

Cardano Node Access

Since you're running this starter kit from a Cardano Workspace, you already have access to the required infrastructure, such as the Cardano Node.

The network to which you're connected (mainnet, preview, preprod, etc) is defined by your project's configuration, selected at the moment of creating your environment.

To simplify the overall process, Cardano Workspaces come already configured with specific environmental variables that allows you to connect to the node without extra step. These are the variables relevant for this particular tutorial:

• CARDANO_NODE_SOCKET_PATH: provides the location of the unix socket within the workspace where the cardano node is listening.
• CARDANO_NODE_MAGIC: the network magic corresponding to the node that is connected to the workspace.

What is Included

This starter kit demonstrates communication with a Cardano Node using either the Node-to-Client or Node-to-Node operation modes of the Ouroboros network protocol and provides examples of multiple Ouroboros mini-protocols.

• BlockFetch
• ChainSync
• LocalTxMonitor

BlockFetch

The BlockFetch mini-protocol allows for fetching specific blocks from a remote Cardano Node using Node-to-Node communication over the network. The code for this example is in a single main.go file under ./cmd/block-fetch.

By default, it will fetch the first block of the Babbage Era on the Cardano mainnet from IOG's backbone servers. To change this, use the following environment variables:

• BLOCK_FETCH_ADDRESS: the address:port pair of a remote Cardano Node to retrieve block
• BLOCK_FETCH_HASH: the block hash to fetch
• BLOCK_FETCH_NETWORK: named Cardano network to use to configure network magic automatically
• BLOCK_FETCH_NETWORK_MAGIC: magic number used to identify a network
• BLOCK_FETCH_RETURN_CBOR: return raw CBOR bytes instead of describing text
• BLOCK_FETCH_SLOT: the slot in which the block hash was minted

Default:

go run ./cmd/block-fetch

Return raw CBOR bytes:

BLOCK_FETCH_RETURN_CBOR=true go run ./cmd/block-fetch

ChainSync

The ChainSync mini-protocol allows for syncronization of the blockchain from a Cardano Node using either Node-to-Node or Node-to-Client communication. This protocol is more complex, and is split into smaller pieces. The simplest is in a single main.go file under ./cmd/chain-tip.

For chain-tip, the default configuration will communicate over the local UNIX socket mounted at /ipc/node.socket via Node-to-Client ChainSync.

Running the code:

go run ./cmd/chain-tip

LocalTxMonitor

This starter kit demonstrates communication with a Cardano Node using the Node-to-Client LocalTxMonitor protocol to fetch information about the Node's mempool contents. It includes a single main.go which performs all of the work, which is located under cmd/tx-monitor.

The default configuration will communicate over the local UNIX socket mounted at /ipc/node.socket via Node-to-Client LocalTxMonitor.

go run ./cmd/tx-monitor

The script will output the contents of the Cardano Node's mempool, then exits.