Exocore

Warning: Exocore is at a very early development stage, hence incomplete, unstable and probably totally unsafe. Use at your own risk.

Exocore is a distributed applications framework with private and encrypted data storage. It can be used as a computing and storage backend for web and mobile applications, and is extensible via WebAssembly. It is designed to be resilient to failures, allow offline usage (ex: on mobile). Exocore exposes SDKs for web/WebAssembly, Mobile (Android/iOS) and Rust.

The primary concept in Exocore is a Cell, which is a unique container for a user's applications and data.

A cell consists of: * Data nodes managing replication and storage by using a blockchain data structure. * Index nodes managing indexation, querying and mutation of the data (collocated with data node). * Applications nodes run applications written in WebAssembly (that can be collocated with index nodes) * Clients (fat or thin) that can also act as index, data and partially run applications' WebAssembly.

Development status

• Data storage and replication layer: Proof of concept
• Transport layer: Proof of concept
• Index layer: Proof of concept
• SDKs: In development
• Security: In development
• Applications layer: Not yet started
• Cell management layer: Not yet started
• Nodes discovery: Not yet started
• Blob storage (IPFS): Not yet started

Dependencies

General

• Build dependencies

  • On MacOS: Install Xcode and command lines tools
  • On Ubuntu: apt install build-essential pkg-config libssl-dev

• Rust

  • Install using rustup
  • Clippy and Rustfmt: rustup component add clippy rustfmt

• Cap'n Proto

  • On MacOS: brew install capnp
  • On Ubuntu: apt install capnproto

• Protobuf

  • On MacOS: brew install protobuf
  • On Ubuntu: snap install protobuf

WASM (optional)

• See WASM client README

Android (optional)

• See Android client README

iOS (optional)

• See iOS client README

Usage & configuration

• CLI:

  • Using Cargo: cargo run --package exo -- <cli option>
  • Using the latest Docker image: docker run --rm -it -v "$PWD:/volume" docker.pkg.github.com/appaquet/exocore/cli <cli options>

• Configuration

  • Most command requires a config.yaml file, for which an example can be found in here: [./examples/config.yaml]
  • At minimum, the config requires 2 keypair: one for the node, one for the cell.
  • The node keypair is unique per server/node, while the cell keypair is shared among servers that host the cell.

Quick start

Create a Cell hosted on 2 nodes

• cp ./examples/config.yaml node1.yaml
• cp ./examples/config.yaml node2.yaml
• For each node's config:
  • Generate keypair for the node: ./utils/cli.sh keys generate
  • Change the node_keypair and node_public_key config with this keypair.
  • Change listen_addresses with unique port per node.
  • Change data_dir with unique data directory per node.
  • Put the other node public_key and addresses in the cells/nodes section.
• Generate keypair for the cell: ./utils/cli.sh keys generate
• Add this keypair in both node1.yaml and node2.yaml in the cells section.
• Initialize chain one first node: ./utils/cli.sh cell --config node1.yaml --public_key <cell_public_key> create_genesis_block
• Start both nodes:
  • Node 1: ./utils/cli.sh server --config ./node1.yaml start
  • Node 2: ./utils/cli.sh server --config ./node2.yaml start

Launch sample web project

• Run the web example:

  • Start development server which will watch files and rebuild automatically:
  • cd ./examples/web && npm install && npm run start
  • Open browser to http://127.0.0.1:8080

• Or build manually:

  • cd ./clients/wasm && wasm-pack build
  • This will create a NPM module at ./clients/wasm/pkg

Documentation

• Replication