Rust Bitcoin Library

Library with support for de/serialization, parsing and executing on data structures and network messages related to Bitcoin and other blockchain-based currencies.

Documentation

Supports (or should support)

• De/serialization of Bitcoin protocol network messages
• De/serialization of blocks and transactions
• Script de/serialization
• Blockchain validation
• Private keys and address creation, de/serialization and validation (including full BIP32 support)
• Pay-to-contract support as in Appendix A of the Blockstream sidechains whitepaper

For JSONRPC interaction with Bitcoin Core, it is recommended to use rust-jsonrpc which uses the underlying strason library which parses decimal numbers as strings, preventing precision errors.

Usage

To use rust-bitcoin, just add the following to your Cargo.toml.

[dependencies]
bitcoin = "0.10"

Known limitations

Consensus

This library must not be used for consensus code (i.e. fully validating blockchain data). It technically supports doing this, using the feature-gated script parser, but doing so is very ill-advised because there are many deviations, known and unknown, between this library and the Bitcoin Core reference implementation. In a consensus based cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin it is critical that all parties are using the same rules to validate data, and this library is simply unable to implement the same rules as Core.

The script interpreter is now gated behind the broken_consensus_code flag for this reason.

Given the complexity of both C++ and Rust, it is unlikely that this will ever be fixed, and there are no plans to do so. Of course, patches to fix specific consensus incompatibilities are welcome.

Documentation

Currently the documentation is very sparse. Patches to add usage examples and to expand on existing docs would be extremely appreciated.

Policy on Altcoins/Altchains

Patches which add support for non-Bitcoin cryptocurrencies by adding constants to existing enums (e.g. to set the network message magic-byte sequence) are welcome. Anything more involved will be considered on a case-by-case basis, as the altcoin landscape includes projects which frequently appear and disappear, and are poorly designed anyway and keeping the codebase maintainable is a large priority.

In general, things that improve cross-chain compatibility (e.g. support for cross-chain atomic swaps) are more likely to be accepted than things which support only a single blockchain.