Mastering Bitcoin, 3rd Edition

Chapter 3. Bitcoin Core: The Reference Implementation

People only accept money in exchange for their valuable goods and services if they believe that they’ll be able to spend that money later. Money that is counterfeit or unexpectedly debased may not be spendable later, so every person accepting bitcoins has a strong incentive to verify the integrity of the bitcoins they receive. The Bitcoin system was designed so that it’s possible for software running entirely on your local computer to perfectly prevent counterfeiting, debasement, and several other critical problems. Software which provides that function is called a full verification node because it verifies every confirmed Bitcoin transaction against every rule in the system. Full verification nodes, full nodes for short, may also provide tools and data for understanding how Bitcoin works and what is currently happening in the network.

In this chapter, we’ll install Bitcoin Core, the implementation that most full node operators have used since the beginning of the Bitcoin network. We’ll then inspect blocks, transactions, and other data from your node, data which is authoritative—​not because some powerful entity designated it as such but because your node independently verified it. Throughout the rest of this book, we’ll continue using Bitcoin Core to create and examine data related to the blockchain and network.

From Bitcoin to Bitcoin Core

Bitcoin is an open source project and the source code is available under an open (MIT) ...