Bulwark December 2019 Update — Long Version.
Preface:
There is a Zen story about the master of a tea ceremony who became a master sword fighter overnight. As the story goes, the tea master inadvertently insulted a great samurai swordsman, who immediately challenged him to a dual the following morning.
The tea master was terrified. He ran to the only sword master he knew and pleaded with him to train him in one night to become an able swordsman. But the tea master was a hopeless student. No matter how patiently the sword master tried to teach him, the team master remained inept. At last, the sword master said to him, “Just approach your sword fight the way you approach your tea ceremonies,” and gave up.
The following morning, heavy-hearted, his fate sealed, the tea master reluctantly went to his appointment. When he faced the samurai on the misty hill, he shut his eyes tight, lifted the heavy sword above his head, then concentrated and centered himself the way he did each time he performed the tea ceremony. At that, the samurai threw down his sword, got down on his knees, and begged the other man for forgiveness, “If I had known you were such a great swordsman,” he said, “I never would have challenged you!”
We hope you will appreciate some of this transference of mastery in Bulwark.
Completed Developments for 2018–2019:
Our Hardware:
The values we set out for the coin and our ecosystem is supported by our hardware. We can start off by discussing the Bulwark secure home node.
The Secure Home Node is our first hardware development. Decentralization should be the foundation of any cryptocurrency. The Bulwark Secure Home Node (SHN) is a key component in the Bulwark network by decentralizing the location of masternodes. The Secure Home Node allows users to operate a node on the network from the privacy and security of their home by utilizing The Onion Router (TOR). What this device does is allow the user to securely and safely host a Bulwark masternode with TOR routing to prevent potential attacks while also allowing staking, all from the comfort of your own home where you don’t need to trust VPS providers and don’t need to be concerned with leaving your home computer on 24/7.
All the hardware and software utilized by the Secure Home Node is open source and free for anyone to use under the MIT license. The Bulwark Core Team would encourage other cryptocurrency developers, especially those in the masternode space to utilize similar hardware.
Secure Home Node: Design & Components
Raspberry Pi Model 3
The Raspberry Pi Model 3 (RPI3) meets or exceeds the specifications for the Secure Home Node to operate. The Raspberry Pi Foundation shares similar philosophies regarding open source with the Bulwark Core Team. The RPI3 was chosen because it is coin agnostic, reusable, and available at a fair price point. Ten of these were etched and sold in a public auction that was a great success. Future Bulwark projects will use custom hardware where applicable.
Customized Case
Originally, we set out to design our own enclosure. This required ordering several iterations of other cases for research. Upon doing this we found the Zebra Classic Case and it served the Bulwark theme enough to focus on the development process while also speeding up progression by over one month. The case is made of acrylic which is durable and light. The top layer is laser etched with the Bulwark logo, and the base parts for the Secure Home Node are available in black or white. The parts and schematics list are included with each SHN.
Power Supply
The Raspberry Pi Universal Power Supply powers the Secure Home Node. It was chosen because it has adapters for worldwide use, and it is 5v USB 3.0 compliant. It’s available in both black and white thereby matching the available Home Node base colors.
Storage
The Bulwark Secure Home Node uses a high capacity 32GB class 10 microSD memory card. 32GB is the maximum size usable by the Raspberry Pi. Class 10 is the highest available write speed for microSD memory cards. Following current growth patterns, the memory card should last over six years.
The Onion Router
The problem with hosting masternodes on local hardware is that it reveals the users IP. The Secure Home Node resolves this by using TOR. The Onion Router encrypts data and uses relays while obfuscating the users IP address. The TOR Project shares similar philosophies regarding open source and privacy with the Bulwark Core Team.
Secure Home Node: Development
Scripts — The Secure Home Node script begins by running several checks. Once the Raspberry Pi passes the checks it allocates memory, enables wifi (if applicable) and changes various other settings. The script then installs the Bulwark Daemon, TOR, dependencies, support tools, and security features. Next, it writes a configuration that sets up Bulwark with TOR, installs the dashboard and configures the system to automatically start everything in the event of a reboot. There are several processes happening in the background when installing the Home Node software. This posed considerable problems that we had to solve during development. The biggest obstacle being that we had to test everything on a physical device instead of running it on a virtual machine or container due to the architecture used by Raspberry Pi. This meant wiping and reinstalling the Raspberry Pi after every test run, making development very time-consuming. We flashed our microSD cards several hundreds of times. Additionally, the RPI has a low clock speed. This required us to apply several hacks to the installation script, like the large amount of “sleep 2” commands. Once these issues were resolved, it was time to move on to the seeders.
Seeders — Static seeders were added for the TOR network. This was done so that Home Node users have automated access to the anonymized portion of the Bulwark network without any extra effort required from the end user. These seeders include full TOR nodes and dual stack TOR/Clearnet bridge nodes. This combination allows Bulwark masternodes on the TOR network to communicate with masternodes on the clearnet. These nodes are split amongst the Bulwark developers across several different regions and we would encourage users to create their own.
Dashboard — The bwk-dash dashboard is a way to monitor your Secure Home Node with a graphical user interface. The Go language (Golang) and react.js were used along with their development tools for the dashboard application. The usage of Go made cross-compilation painless and allowed for development to be done on a standard PC (x86_64) for use on an RPI (ARM). The development of bwk-dash was an enjoyable and smooth process without any pitfalls experienced outside of the usual battle against time.
Bastion Exchange — a centralized exchange with Bulwark pairings. While Bastion is a stand-alone project, Bulwark serves as the main trading pair on this exciting, brand-new cryptocurrency exchange, further enabling reduced trading fees with BWK, listing fees paid in BWK.
3. Bulwark Masternode Hosting Platform: Bulwark’s masternode hosting service offers triple redundancy for all its masternodes. It offers a modern user interface, so you’ll have an easy time navigating the platform. Choose between plenty of digital coins to get your masternode up and running in no time. A dashboard panel on the left side of the site lets you monitor your nodes, vote for additional coins, and request help if needed.
4. Bulwark Custom Blockchain Explorer: When Bulwark first launched, we utilized an open source block explorer that had given us a multitude of issues which lead to the explorer crashing frequently. After many nights attempting to debug and otherwise fix this explorer, we decided we were spending far too much time and attention towards fixing this. Our solution? Make our own block explorer so we could include all the accessibility and stability we needed with an aesthetically pleasing design we wanted.
We’ve built a great open-source explorer and now have over 130 forks of our code with many other projects expanding upon the easy-to-understand node.js code base
5. Bulwark for Good — community driven project. Run as a self-sustained (through masternode rewards), donation free cryptocurrency-based charity, that has helped over 40,000 kids in schools.
Active Developments for 2019–2020:
Aegis Hardware Wallet — The first standalone and open source hardware wallet on which users will be able to safely and securely store Bulwark. Hardware and software will be made open source upon launch. The goal with the Aegis Hardware Wallet is to allow the cryptocurrency community a cost-effective alternative to storing their coins without having to rely on larger companies that provide overpriced solutions on closed source hardware or closed source software for their hardware wallets. The Bulwark hardware wallet will be truly open source, meaning any coin can adapt it for their platform, expanding the reach of hardware wallet solutions, allowing anyone, regardless of choice of coin, to have access to the privacy and security benefits of using a hardware wallet.
In layman terms: Aegis will be the second hardware development for Bulwark. The Aegis will be a self-contained hardware wallet with open source software. From this perspective, The Aegis will be faster than other hardware wallets on the market, will be multipurpose with cross platform 2FA and, in keeping with our open source ideology, we will be providing templates so that any coin that wants to list on the Aegis platform will be able to do so free of charge so their community can enjoy the benefits. Another very exciting service is that the Aegis will be wireless, so hardwired connections to a central computer will not be necessary.
Citadel Router — A standalone router and staking box in one package. The Bulwark Home Router will optionally route network traffic through TOR or I2P, allowing for the best in security and privacy while maintaining capabilities utilized by the Bulwark Secure Home Node.
In layman terms: The Citadel will be a router that allows the end user to broadcast a personalized WiFi network at their home while utilizing Bulwark’s network to automatically route all traffic through I2P, providing complete and total privacy to them. While this development in and of itself is impressive, The Citadel will also double as a Secure Home Node in that it will have all the same functionality. An additional development we are considering has to do with the issue of WiFi availability. Most houses with routers have an irritating dead spot in one or two places. We are researching the potential to develop small WiFi spider repeaters that will automatically connect to The Citadel and spread the available connectivity to those that may need or want it.
Carver2D blockchain explorer framework — You can now check out the source code to our upcoming Bulwark Cryptocurrency next generation explorer! It’s written completely from scratch and uses a very different approach to storing blockchain data.
You can already see a working proof of concept on our Github.
https://github.com/bulwark-crypto/carver-blockchain-framework-server https://github.com/bulwark-crypto/carver-blockchain-framework-client
Stay tuned for an upcoming article on our planned adaptation of the Stratis codebase. Stratis is a powerful and flexible Blockchain Development Platform designed for the needs of real world financial services and businesses
Bulwark was the first cryptocurrency in the world to show per-block ROI% for proof of stake coins. This is just one of the many unique features of our very own custom blockchain explorer. We’ve built a great open-source explorer and now have over 130 forks of our code with many other projects expanding upon the easy-to-understand node.js code base.
Why is Bulwark Hardware better? In doing market research, we found that there are no other projects attempting to do what we’re doing within the crypto space in reference to the Secure Home Node or The Citadel.
Most of the cryptocurrency related hardware are overpriced Raspberry Pi stake boxes that are built solely to turn a profit, with no real emphasis on innovation as well as hardware wallets that are closed source and require listing fees or core development assistance/approval to be able to list on their platforms.
Our intention with the Aegis is to provide a faster and more innovative product that we will continue to improve over time while providing an open source that allows any project with the knowledge to be able to add themselves to the Aegis platform. As far as the Citadel is concerned, there is no hardware to compare it to in the crypto space. In the hardware world in general, there are a couple devices that provide WiFi routing services via Tor, but in our research, all have had a litany of claims including false advertisement as well as troubling security flaws. We endeavor to go above and beyond to create a truly innovative device not just in crypto, but in the hardware sector altogether while providing speed, innovation, and security.
In summary, we are proud to build future hardware that will be open source and support cryptocurrency communities and enthusiasts. We believe that decentralization and distribution begin at the blockchain level and that hardware is the next step toward fully realizing these goals. We hope that after reading this, you will have a better understanding of Bulwark and join us in many fruitful tea ceremonies (refer to our preface in the beginning of this long-winded update for reference) that are to come.
Stop by Discord or Telegram and wish us happy (second) birthday! We look forward to seeing you.
