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CIC Software

Technology Setup

Generally the technical setup is done by a local Platform Service Provider like Grassroots Economics. The more local the better.

  1. Open Source (CopyLeft) Software: Ensure that you trust the software being used and that even if it is open source now, that improvements and upgrades will remain open source. Check out our stack.
  2. Distributed Ledger: We highly recommend developing your own ledger system where members of the community hold nodes that decentralize and secure the ledger.
  3. Interfaces / Wallets: We’ve built custodial systems that enable users to assign guardians that can help them reset lost passwords.
  4. Data Sharing: Given the consent of the community, anonymous transaction data can be recorded and displayed

CIC Stack Summary

While work toward non-custodial and web interfaces are underway, the CIC Stack is currently a custodial wallet and blockchain bidirectional interface engine for community inclusion currencies

  • Fully Open source GPL 3.0 License
  • Automates the full lifecycle of blockchain transactions
  • Chain agnostic by design
  • Introduces a new chain library toolset written from scratch
  • Modular design with fully standalone but recombinable components
  • Includes a broad collection CLI tools for most common chain and engine operations
  • Empowers implementers to choose their level of abstraction
  • Supports both local, containerized and decentralized environments
  • Support last mile front-end apis and integrations

System parts

  • Base components, containing all necessary provisions for services and tooling. (Chaintools)
  • Generic services components, libraries, daemons and services making up the custodial engine. (cicnet)
  • Deployment components, which facilitates deployment of the custodial engine, as well as seeding data for development, demonstration and migration. (GrassrootsEconomics)
  • Test Coverage

Base components

  • Queue handling (chainqueue): Makes sure that a transaction sent on behalf of a user is sent, resubmitted if stalled, and whose execution is verified by quering the network state.
  • Chain syncing, (chainsyncer): Retrieves all state changes from the network and executes an arbitary number of code fragments per transaction.
  • RPC (Remote Procedure Call) interface, which divides in two parts:
    1. Generic interface (chainlib): Concepts common to all chain-like RPCs, and provides a thread-safe interaction framework.
    2. Ethereum interface (chainlib-eth): An extension of the former for the Ethereum/EVM network.
  • Chain tooling (chainlib, chainlib-eth): Granular access to all conceptual layers of chain interaction, including binary serializations and application interfaces, along with CLI (Command Line Interface) tooling framework.
  • Signer, (crypto-dev-signer) Low-security keystore and signer which is easily usable in both production (provided that no external access is possible) and in any development environment.
  • Configuration (confini): Incrementally merging configuration definition from multiple modules, and easily overriding them with command line flags and environment variables.

Generic services components

  • All smart contract wrappers in the cicnet repository.
  • CIC Contract registry (cic-eth-registry): Defines token and resource pointer lookup and authentication resources.
  • Daemons and microservices in the apps subdirectories in the cic-internal-integration monorepo, specifically:
    • cic-eth: Massively parallel and fault-tolerant implementation of the custodial signer/queuer/syncer engine, accepting tasks from end-users via middleware.
    • cic-cache: Cache syncer and database fetching and storing details on transactions of interest.
    • cic-ussd: State machine, microservices and gateway for end-users using the USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) interface via telcos.
    • cic-notify: Pluggable notification engine, initially used only for SMS notifications to end-users.

Deployment components

  • Data seeding and/or migrations for new development deployments. Located in the apps/data-seeding subdirectory of cic-internal-integration.
  • Deployment and initialization of network resources (smart contracts etc) and initialization of the custodial engine. Located in the apps/contract-migrations subdirectory of cic-internal-integration.

stack.svg

Components by category

(in no particular order)

area category components maintainer support tech relative complexity maturity
chain queue/sync base any chainqueue, chainsyncer Louis ? py mid hi
chain queue/sync engine custodial cic-eth, cic-eth-registry, cic-signer Louis Phil py, celery hi hi
notifications custodial cic-notify Phil ? py, celery lo mid
ussd wallet custodial cic-ussd Phil ? py, celery hi hi
wallet interface translations any cic-translations Will? Phil yaml? lo hi
HTTP authentications custodial usumbufu, cic-auth-helper Louis Blair, Sohail py hi hi
python chain libaries any chainlib-eth, chainlib, Louis (community?) py mid hi
python signer libraries any funga, funga-eth Louis ? py mid hi
local queue and sync non-custodial chaind, chaind-eth, cic-batch Louis ? py mid ?
contract interfaces any cic-contracts, eth-erc20, eth-owned, erc20-faucet, eth-interface Louis ? solidity, py, bash mid hi
ge token contract any erc20-demurrage-token, sarafu-faucet Louis ? solidity, py hi hi/lo
verificable claims base any okota Louis ? solidity, py mid hi
cic analytics and aggregator custodial cic-data-golang Blair Darren golang mid mid
cic analytics views custodial cic-data-golang Darren ? grafana, golang? mid ?
web2 metadata store custodial cic-meta ? Louis typescript mid hi
metadata protocol any crdt-meta ~~Spence~~ ~~Geoff~~, Louis typescript mid hi
metadata schemas any cic-types Phil ~~Geoff~~ py mid hi
contributor badge nft non-custodial (rose bootcamp project), nft-badgetoken solidity, py, typescript, react(?) Rose Louis mid lo
web3 transition adapters any fadafada, fadafada-curl Louis (community?) rust mid mid
cli cic creation any cic-cli Phil Louis py hi mid
cli metadata viewer custodial clicada, cic-staff-installer ? Louis py lo lo
ge blog website pelican website Ida Will py, pelican lo hi
ge docs website docs webstie Will ? py, (platform)? mid? mid
local dev bootstrap devops cic-stack ? all bash, docker-compose hi hi
dev data seeding / migration any cic-stack Phil Louis py, bash, typecsript hi hi
Telegram wallet custodial ? Sohail? ? ? ? no
chain queue/sync interface custodial cic-eth-server, ... Lum ? py ? ?
Web2 wallet custodial social recovery protocol Lum ? ? ? no
P2P Services discovery any cic-p2p, village message protocol Louis ? ? ? ?
Gas helpers any cic-gas-proxy, ethd-gas-sum Louis ? py lo lo
Swarm provisions non-custodial libswarm-ng, pylibswarm Louis (community?) c, py mid hi
Multisig non-custodial erc20-transfer-authorization Louis ? solidity, py mid lo

("Relative complexity" means complexity in relation to the function of the component.)

Deployment requirements

There are the requirements to run our complete software stack:

Blockchain infrastructure

  • 3 x (2 CPU, 4GB RAM, 50+ GB Storage) for validator nodes future proofed for 1 yr across different cloud providers/data centers.
  • n x (1 CPU, 2GB RAM) for prunning state nodes, useful for non-custodial web3 users tx submissions.

Custodial infrastructure

  • Kubernetes preffered
  • 4 CPU, 8GB RAM, 50+ GB Storage minimum (Includes additional monitoring components)

Last update: 2024-03-14
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