ARGoS-Blockchain interface: Blockchain module (Module 1)

This blockchain module allows for creating an Ethereum network with several nodes, where each node is located in a separate Docker container. For the ARGoS-Blockchain interface, the interaction with the Ethereum nodes is done via C++, using the code in the following repository: https://github.com/Pold87/robot-swarms-need-blockchain

This repository contains one module of the ARGoS-Blockchain interface that is described in the article Blockchain Technology Secures Robot Swarms: A Comparison of Consensus Protocols and Their Resilience to Byzantine Robots by Strobel, V., Castello Ferrer, E., and Dorigo, M..

For debugging purposes or for creating your own private Ethereum network, you can also use this module without ARGoS.

Overview of the interface

Setup

The very first time you run this code, it is required to create the Docker image for the Ethereum nodes and initialize Docker Swarm as follows:

cd geth/
docker build -t mygeth .
docker swarm init

Additionally, you have to set the variable DOCKERFOLDER in the file global_config.sh to the full path where this repository is located on your computer, for example:

/Users/vstrobel/Documents/ARGoS-Blockchain-interface/

In order to be able to mine, you need to create the DAG datasets as follows (creating the files requires approximately 2 GB disk space and executing the script can take take several minutes):

bash local_scripts/create_dag.sh

If you get an error in any of the stepts, try executing:

bash local_scripts/stop_network.sh

Run

Usually, the network is created when a swarm robotics experiment is started, using one of the start scripts in https://github.com/Pold87/robot-swarms-need-blockchain.

However, you can also start the Ethereum network without ARGoS, using the following command:

bash local_scripts/start_network.sh <number of nodes>

That is, bash local_scripts/start_network.sh 5, would create a private Ethereum network with 5 nodes.