Node

Prerequisites

You need to have git, node.js and docker installed.

Installation

# Download the monorepo
git clone https://github.com/bitcoin-computer/monorepo.git

# Move into monorepo folder
cd monorepo

# Install the dependencies
npm install

Usage

Running a local development node

To start your node at http://localhost:1031 run the commands below. The node is ready once the log activity subsides. On regtest this will take a few minutes, on mainnet and testnet it can take days or even weeks, depending on your hardware.

# Move to node folder
cd packages/node

# Copy the .env file and litecoin.conf file from the examples
cp chain-setup/ltc/regtest/.env.example .env
cp chain-setup/ltc/regtest/litecoin.conf.example litecoin.conf

# Run the node on litecoin regtest
npm run up

The node will create the docker volumes in the packages/node/chain-setup/** directory of the selected chain and network. This folder contains the blockchain data and the database. The postgres database is used to efficiently store the complete blockchain data, for fast access and indexing.

Running a production node

To run the node in production, you need to configure the .env file with appropriate settings for your environment. You can copy the example file and modify it as needed.

# Move to node folder
cd packages/node
# Copy the .env file from the examples
cp chain-setup/ltc/mainnet/.env.example .env
cp chain-setup/ltc/mainnet/litecoin.conf.example litecoin.conf

After configuring the .env file, you can start the node with the following command:

npm run up

IMPORTANT: Create indexes after syncing to mainnet

To speed up the syncing process, syncing is carried out without db indexes. After the node has synced, you can create the indexes with the command below.

# In the node folder run the following command
npm run create-indexes

Postgres Database

The node uses a Postgres database to store the synced information required by the Bitcoin Computer protocol. The database is automatically created and managed by the node using a docker container. The full db schema can be found here.

By default the database uses the following credentials:

POSTGRES_USER='bcn'
POSTGRES_PASSWORD='bcn'
POSTGRES_DB='bcn'
POSTGRES_HOST='db'
POSTGRES_PORT='5432'

You can configure these from the .env file for production deployments.

Run the Tests on Regtest

You can run the integration tests with the command below.

npm run test

On Litecoin regtest, the halving period is set to infinity. This makes it possible to run a large number of tests without having to restart the node.

Fund a Wallet

In regtest mode, you can fund a wallet with the following commands.

# Fund Litecoin regtest wallet
npm run fund ltc <address_1> ... <address_n>

# Fund Bitcoin regtest wallet
npm run fund btc  <address_1> ... <address_n>

Stop the Node

You can stop the node with the command below. When you restart the process, it will resume from the last block processed.

npm run down

Reset the Node

The command below will reset the database, delete all blockchain data, and stop all docker containers.

npm run clean

Architecture Overview

The Bitcoin Computer Node is a high-performance, multi-process system designed to efficiently synchronize blockchain data, track mempool activity, and serve real-time subscriptions.

At a high level, the node consists of:

Primary coordinator process
- Reads block headers sequentially
- Detects chain reorganizations (reorgs)
- Coordinates parallel workers
Parallel sync workers
- Parse blocks and transactions
- Insert inputs, outputs, and metadata into Postgres
- Scale automatically with available CPU cores
Live mempool listener
- Subscribes to raw transactions via ZeroMQ
- Activates once the blockchain is sufficiently synchronized
API and SSE service
- Serves HTTP API requests
- Streams real-time updates via Server-Sent Events (SSE)
Background maintenance tasks
- Periodic cleanup of stale unconfirmed (mempool) data (see clean-mempool for more details)

The architecture is designed for robustness, scalability, and real-time responsiveness.

Advanced configuration

You can configure several options by editing the .env file. See the example for details.

# Chain: BTC, LTC, DOGE or PEPE
BCN_CHAIN='LTC'
# Network: mainnet, testnet, or regtest
BCN_NETWORK='regtest'

# Postgres Connection Credentials
POSTGRES_USER='bcn'
POSTGRES_PASSWORD='bcn'
POSTGRES_DB='bcn'
POSTGRES_HOST='db'
POSTGRES_PORT='5432'
POSTGRES_MAX_CONNECTIONS='20'
POSTGRES_IDLE_TIMEOUT_MILLIS='3000'

# Bitcoin Node Settings
BITCOIN_IMAGE='litecoinproject/litecoin-core:0.21'
BITCOIN_DATA_DIR='/home/litecoin/.litecoin'
BITCOIN_CONF_FILE='litecoin.conf'

# Node Settings
# RPC Client Credentials
BITCOIN_RPC_USER='bcn-admin'
BITCOIN_RPC_PASSWORD='kH4nU5Okm6-uyC0_mA5ztVNacJqZbYd_KGLl6mx722A='
BITCOIN_RPC_HOST='node'
BITCOIN_RPC_PORT='19332'
BITCOIN_P2P_PORT='19444'
BITCOIN_RPC_PROTOCOL='http'

# Default wallet name
BITCOIN_DEFAULT_WALLET='defaultwallet'

# Bitcoin Computer Node (BCN) Settings
# Port for Bitcoin Computer Node
BCN_PORT='1031'

# Enable to launch with fixed number of parallel workers
# BCN_NUM_WORKERS='6'

BCN_ZMQ_URL='tcp://node:28332'
BCN_ZMQ_PORT='28332'
# Height of the block at which the zmq connection should start
BCN_ZMQ_ACTIVATION_HEIGHT=1

# Url of the Bitcoin Computer Node, defaults to localhost
BCN_URL='http://127.0.0.1:1031'

# Allowed RPC Methods
BCN_ALLOWED_RPC_METHODS='^get|^gen|^send|^lis'

# Setup the environment to 'prod' (no console logs) or 'dev'
BCN_ENV='dev'

# Winston Logger Settings
# Log levels
# 0: Error logs only
# 1: Error and warning logs
# 2: Error, warning and info logs
# 3: Error, warning, info and http logs
# 4: Error, warning, info, http and debug logs
BCN_LOG_LEVEL='2'
# Maximum number of logs to keep. If not set, no logs will be removed. This can be
# a number of files or number of days. If using days, add 'd' as the suffix.
BCN_LOG_MAX_FILES='14d'
# Maximum log file size. You can use 'k' for KB, 'm' for MB, and 'g' for GB. Once
# the size of the log file exceeds the specified size, the log is rotated. If no
# size is specified the log is not rotated.
BCN_LOG_MAX_SIZE='20m'
# A boolean to define whether or not to gzip archived log files.
BCN_LOG_ZIP='false'

# Show logs at db service
BCN_SHOW_DB_LOGS='false'

# Rate Limiting Settings
BCN_RATE_LIMIT_ENABLED='false'
BCN_RATE_LIMIT_WINDOW='900000'
BCN_RATE_LIMIT_MAX='300'
BCN_RATE_LIMIT_STANDARD_HEADERS='true'
BCN_RATE_LIMIT_LEGACY_HEADERS='false'

# Comma separated list of banned countries, encoded as ISO-3166 alpha2 country.
# codes (see https://www.geonames.org/countries/)
BCN_BANNED_COUNTRIES=

# Default value for protocol in the _url parameter. Set to https if behind a load balancer.
BCN_OFFCHAIN_PROTOCOL=

# Output columns for which streamTXOs function should emit events (and their combinations)
BCN_STREAM_KEYS='satoshis,asm,expHash,mod,publicKey'

# Mempool Cleanup Settings
BCN_MEMPOOL_CLEANUP_INTERVAL_MS='900000' # 15 minutes
BCN_MEMPOOL_CLEANUP_ENDPOINT_ENABLED='false' # recommended to be disabled in .env mainnet configuration
BCN_MEMPOOL_STALE_GRACE_HOURS='2' # Number of hours after which a mempool transaction is considered stale and can be removed

How to Connect to the Database Directly

You can connect to the Postgres database to inspect synced data. To connect, obtain the docker container ID of the database with the command below.

docker ps

Then use the container ID to run the psql client inside the database container.

docker exec -it <container_id> psql -h localhost -p 5432 -U bcn bcn

See the DB schema for an overview of tables and relations.

Client Side Library

The Bitcoin Computer Library can connect to a Bitcoin Computer Node to provides access to its functionality.

// Import client side library
import { Computer } from '@bitcoin-computer/lib'

// Configuration to connect to node on localhost
const conf = {
  chain: 'LTC',
  network: 'regtest',
  url: 'http://localhost:1031',
}

// Create instance of client side library
const computer = new Computer(conf)
const address = computer.getAddress()

// Fund client side library
const { txId } = await computer.faucet(1e4)

// Return the balance
expect((await computer.getBalance(address)).balance).eq(BigInt(1e4))

// Return the transactions
expect(await computer.listTxs(address)).deep.eq({
  sentTxs: [],
  receivedTxs: [
    {
      txId,
      inputsSatoshis: 0n,
      outputsSatoshis: 10_000n,
      satoshis: 10_000n,
    },
  ],
})

If you do not specify a url property it will default to the url below. The node at that url runs Litecoin on regtest network mode and uses the latest version of the Bitcoin Computer Node software.

https://rltc.node.bitcoincomputer.io

Api

The Bitcoin Computer Node exposes an API that can be used to interact with the node. The variables CHAIN and NETWORK are used to define the chain and network that the node is running on.

Wallet

Method	Description
balance	Get the balance of a wallet.
list-txs	List sent and received transactions for a given address.
sent-outputs	List sent outputs of a wallet.
received-outputs	List received outputs of a wallet.

Transactions

Method	Description
ancestors	Get the ancestors of a transaction.
bulk	Get raw transactions for a list of transaction ids.
hex	Get a transaction in hex format.
json	Get a transaction in json format.
post	Post a transaction to the Bitcoin network.

Blockchain

Method	Description
rpc	Call a Bitcoin RPC method.
clean-mempool	Remove stale unconfirmed mempool entries from the DB.

Query revisions

Method	Description
get-txos	Get all the transaction outputs based on specific query parameters.
latest	Get the latest revision of a smart contract.
next	Get the next revision of a given revision.
non-standard-utxos	Query revisions by module specifier, public key, limit, order, offset and list of transaction ids.
prev	Get the previous revision of a given revision.
revToId	Given a revision, get the id of the smart contract.
subscribe	Subscribe to new revisions matching specific query parameters.

Version compatibility

If you run your own node, make sure to use the same versions of Lib and Node.