Gradecoin

This will sit behind nginx reverse proxy so running at 127.0.0.1:8080 is no problem, or https.

$ cargo run

$ curl --location --request POST 'localhost:8080/transaction' --header 'Content-Type: application/json' --data-raw '{
  "source": "Myself Truly",
  "target": "Literally Anybody Else",
  "amount": 12,
  "timestamp": "2021-04-07T00:17:00"
}'

how?

authentication

Uses /register endpoint - Student creates their own 2048 bit RSA keypair - Downloads Gradecoin's Public Key from Moodle - Encrypts their JSON wrapped Public Key and Student ID using Gradecoin's Public Key - Their public key is now in our database and can be used to sign their JWT's during requests

transactions

Uses /transaction endpoint - offer a transaction - POST request - The request header should have Bearer [JWT.Token signed with Student Public Key] - The request header should be signed by the Public Key of the by field in the transaction - fetch the list of pending transactions - GET request - All the pending transactions are returned in a JSON body - ❓ Does this need to be authenticated as well?

blocks - [INCOMPLETE]

Uses /block endpoint - Blocks are proposed using N transactions - POST request - ❓ This can be an exact number (=20) or if the last block is some time old then small blocks can be proposed.

Block proposal: Block + some nonce is hashed using a simple hash function, resulting hash should have some property that will require some computation time (~1 minute? 10 minutes?) to find (=guessing) Proof-of-work scheme. First proposed valid block is accepted, if assertions hold. (No consensus, we are the sole authority, there's no blockchain here, only a glorified database and busywork)
Pending transactions get cleared out after a new block is accepted
- ❓ All or only the used ones?

payment

First transaction in the block is called Coinbase, the block reward is paid to the output (Bitcoin notation, different) of this transaction. If we do this then the rest of the transactions are just make believe playing. So banker + block reward approach seems better.

Big Thank List

https://github.com/blurbyte/restful-rust
https://github.com/zupzup/warp-postgres-example
https://blog.logrocket.com/create-an-async-crud-web-service-in-rust-with-warp/

How to be a good server

https://www.iana.org/assignments/http-status-codes/http-status-codes.xhtml
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7231