Hive - Decentralizing the exchange of ideas and information

Hive is a Graphene based, social blockchain that was created as a fork of Steem and born on the core idea of decentralization. Originally, Hive was announced on the Steem blockchain prior to the initial token airdrop. Hive did not have any ICO or mining period.

The Hive blockchain removes the elements of centralization and imbalanced control that have plagued the Steem blockchain over the last 4 years. Since it’s launch on March 20, 2020 Hive is growing and evolving day by day. Hive's prime selling points are its decentralization, 3 second transaction speed and ability to handle large volumes. It is ideal real estate for a variety of innovative projects focused on a broad range of fields, from open source development to games.

Hive serves as the operational home for all kinds of projects, companies, and applications. Having a highly active and passionate community, Hive has become a thriving atmosphere for new and experienced developers to quickly bootstrap their applications. On top of this, Hive is extremely rewarding to content creators and curators alike.

Hive aims to be the preferred blockchain for dApp development with Smart Media Tokens at its core. With SMTs, everyone can leverage the power of Hive.

The technical development of the Hive blockchain itself is carried out by the founding decentralized group of over 30 open source developers, many of whom were instrumental in creating Steem back in 2016, and supported by a growing community of additional open source developers and witnesses.

Documents

Developer Portal: https://developers.hive.io/

Advantages

Hive Fund
Truly Decentralized Community
Free Transactions (Resource Credits = Freemium Model)
Fast Block Confirmations (3 seconds)
Time Delay Security (Vested Hive & Savings)
Hierarchical Role Based Permissions (Keys)
Integrated Token Allocation
Smart Media Tokens (soon)
Lowest Entry-Barrier for User Adoption in the market
Dozens of dApps already built on Hive and many more to come

Technical Details

Currency symbol HIVE
HBD - Hive's very own stable coin with a two-way peg
Delegated Proof-of-Stake Consensus (DPoS)
10% APR inflation narrowing to 1% APR over 20 years
- 65% of inflation to authors/curators.
- 15% of inflation to stakeholders.
- 10% of inflation to block producers.
- 10% of inflation to Hive Fund.

Installation

Getting started with Hive is fairly simple. You can either choose to use docker-images, build with docker manually or build from source directly. All steps have been documented and while many different OS are supported, the easiest one is Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.

Quickstart

Just want to get up and running quickly? We have pre-built Docker images for your convenience. More details are in our Quickstart Guide.

Building

We strongly recommend using one of our pre-built Docker images or using Docker to build Hive. Both of these processes are described in the Quickstart Guide.

But if you would still like to build from source, we also have build instructions for Linux (Ubuntu LTS).

Dockerized deployment

Building a docker image is described here: Building under Docker

If you'd like to use our already pre-built official binary images, it's as simple as downloading it from the Dockerhub registry with only one command:

docker pull hiveio/hive

To run a Hive consensus node there are needed resources:

data directory to hold a blockchain file(s) (ca 400GB is required)
storage to hold a shared memory file (ca. 24GB of memory is required at the moment to store state data):

There is provided a script wrapping docker run statement and emulating direct hived usage: run_hived_img.sh

General usage: run_hived_img.sh <docker_img> [OPTION[=VALUE]]... [<hived_option>]...

run_hived_img.sh can take following parameters:

<img_name> - name of image to create a container for,
--name=<container_name> - allows to specify explicit container name
--docker-option=OPTION  - allows to pass give OPTION directly to docker run spawn

Options specific to node endpoints (they are also creating appropriete docker port mappings at container spawn)

--webserver-http-endpoint=<endpoint>
--webserver-ws-endpoint=<endpoint>
--p2p-endpoint=<endpoint>

Options to specify node work directories (script will pass appropriete volume mappings to underlying docker run basing on following options):

--data-dir=DIRECTORY_PATH - allows to specify blockchain data directory. See deployment scenarios described below, for details how to prepare this directory
--shared-file-dir=DIRECTORY_PATH - allows to specify a directory where dockerized hived will store its state file (shared_memory.bin). For best performance results, it should be located at ram-disk, inside subdirectory created under /dev/shm resource.

Started container (and hived process) will create a log file: hived.log located in specified data directory (so in examples below: /home/hived/datadir/hived.log).
By default, container is always started in atached mode. You can detach it by using Ctrl-p Ctrl-q shortcuts as described in docker attach documentation
If you would like to start container in detached mode, you can pass --detach option to the run_hived_img.sh script.

Logs can be also examined using docker logs feature:

docker logs -f hived-instance  # follow along

To stop container, you should use a docker stop hived-instance command. Successfully stopped container should leave in the hived.log `exited cleanly` message:

```
< some log contents >
Shutting down...
Leaving application main loop...
exited cleanly 
```

Scenarios of using dockerized hived (assumed mainnet configuration)

Full P2P sync. In this case, all what you need is to specify empty data directory and the storage for shared memory file. Blockchain directory will be filled by hived node performing a full P2P sync. Please be sure, that dockerized hived process has write access to both directories

run_hived_img.sh my-local-image --name=hived-instance --data-dir=/home/hived/datadir --shared-file-dir=/dev/shm/hived/consensus_node --webserver-http-endpoint=0.0.0.0:8091 --webserver-ws-endpoint=0.0.0.0:8090 --p2p-endpoint=0.0.0.0:2001

Pointed data directory must contain an empty blockchain subdirectory otherwise hived node can fail at start.
Hived node full replay, basing on local copy of blockchain file(s). To perform a replay, you need to copy blockchain file(s) into directory expected by hived node. Dockerized version assumes a data-dir/blockchain location where block_log and block_log.artifacts files should be stored. Dockerized hived process must write access to such directory and files. To run replay, you need to pass --force-replay option to the run_hived_img.sh script, which next will be passed to the underlying hived process.

Before starting following command line, there was created and prepared a /home/hived/datadir (containing a blockchain subdirectory with block_log and block_log.artifacts files), like also created /dev/shm/hived/consensus_node directory

run_hived_img.sh my-local-image --name=hived-instance --data-dir=/home/hived/datadir --shared-file-dir=/dev/shm/hived/consensus_node --webserver-http-endpoint=0.0.0.0:8091 --webserver-ws-endpoint=0.0.0.0:8090 --p2p-endpoint=0.0.0.0:2001 --force-replay
Hived node configuration customization Data directory specified to run_hived_img.sh spawn can of course contain a custom config.ini file, where as usually can be specified dedicated set of plugins and their specific options. Otherwise, hived node (also as usually) will generate default one in this directory. Anyway dockerized deployment has some gotchas:
- data directory, shared memory file directory options are always passed to underlying hived command line, as internal directory located inside docker container
- port configuration always should be left as is, since dockerized hived process shall always use default ones, which can be externally mapped by specifying --webserver-http-endpoint, --webserver-ws-endpoint, --p2p-endpoint options to the script
- snapshot, account history storage directories rather shall be specified relatievely to docker internal /home/hived/datadir which is mapped to hosted data directory
Other options can be as usually passed directly to the (run_hived_img.sh) command line (as hived-options) or explicitly specified in config.ini file.
Running API node and associated cli_wallet in network daemon mode To run an API node and next start a cli_wallet cooperating to it, use following steps:
- start a Hive container instance running hived enabled required set of plugins, like also having additionally mapped the port cli_wallet will be operating on. It is important to specify this optional port mapping at container start, since it can't be changed later, without restarting the container.
```
./run_hived_img.sh my-local-image --name=api-instance --data-dir=/home/hived/datadir --shared-file-dir=/dev/shm/hived/api_node \
  --webserver-http-endpoint=0.0.0.0:8091 --webserver-ws-endpoint=0.0.0.0:8090 --p2p-endpoint=0.0.0.0:2001 \
  --docker-option="-p 8093:8093" \
  --plugin=account_history_api --plugin=database_api --plugin=condenser_api --plugin=account_by_key_api --plugin=wallet_bridge_api \
  --force-replay
```
- run a cli_wallet tool, which should execute inside docker container started in previous step
```
./run_cli_wallet_img.sh api-instance \
  --rpc-http-endpoint=0.0.0.0:8093 # that means that we want to expose from docker container the cli_wallet HTTP server at port 8093. This port value should match to the port specified at `--docker-option="-p 8093:8093"` passed to run_hived_img.sh
  --rpc-http-allowip=172.17.0.1 # this is very important option, which allows to accept HTTP connections (incoming to cli_wallet) only from given IPs. This example value covers default docker bridge network address mode. Best to check given ip using `docker container inspect api-instance` and verify IP specific to its Networks property
```
By default, the run_cli_wallet_img.sh script will instruct a cli_wallet to load/store its data (like password, imported keys to operate on) in the wallet.json file located in the directory specified as data-dir mapping during run_hived_img.sh spawn. You can also copy an existing wallet.json file to the data-dir. Then started cli_wallet will load such preconfigured values from it.

Then you can operate with cli_wallet using network API calls, like this:

curl --request POST --url http://:8093/ --header 'Content-Type: application/json' --data '{"jsonrpc": "2.0", "id": 0, "method": "info", "params": []}' curl --request POST --url http://:8093/ --header 'Content-Type: application/json' --data '{"jsonrpc": "2.0", "id": 0, "method": "unlock", "params": ["my-secres-pass"]}' curl --request POST --url http://:8093/ --header 'Content-Type: application/json' --data '{"jsonrpc": "2.0", "id": 0, "method": "create_account", "params": ["initminer", "alice", "{}", True]}'

CLI Wallet

We provide a basic cli wallet for interfacing with hived. The wallet is self-documented via command line help. The node you connect to via the cli wallet needs to be running the account_by_key_api, condenser_api, database_api, account_history_api, wallet_bridge_api and needs to be configured to accept WebSocket connections via webserver-ws-endpoint.

cli_wallet tool offers two operating modes:

interactive, when given commands are executed in interactive command line
daemon based, where it is possible to execute wallet commands using RPC calls. It is important to specify also an IP set, which are allowed to establish connections to the wallet HTTP server. See --rpc-http-endpoint, --daemon, --rpc-http-allowip options for details

To prepare transactions, you need to execute few setup steps in cli_wallet:

use set_password call establish a password protecting your wallet from unauthorized access
use unlock to turn full-operation mode in the wallet
import private key(s) using import_key "WIF-key" command

Keys and password are stored in the wallet.json file.

Testing

See doc/devs/testing.md for test build targets and info on how to use lcov to check code test coverage.

Configuration

Config File

Run hived once to generate a data directory and config file. The default data directory location is ~/.hived. Kill hived. If you want to modify the config to your liking, we have example config used in the docker image. All options will be present in the default config file and there may be more options needing to be changed from the docker configs (some of the options actually used in images are configured via command line).

Seed Nodes

A list of some seed nodes to get you started can be found in doc/seednodes.txt.

This same file is baked into the docker images and can be overridden by setting HIVED_SEED_NODES in the container environment at docker run time to a whitespace delimited list of seed nodes (with port).

System Requirements

[To Be Added]

No Support & No Warranty

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

openhive-network/hive

openhive-network

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