Timestamp Virtual Machine

Further details 👉 Medium article

Avalanche is a network composed of multiple blockchains. Each blockchain is an instance of a Virtual Machine (VM), much like an object in an object-oriented language is an instance of a class. That is, the VM defines the behavior of the blockchain.

TimestampVM defines a blockchain that is a timestamp server. Each block in the blockchain contains the timestamp when it was created along with a 32-byte piece of data (payload). Each block’s timestamp is after its parent’s timestamp. This VM demonstrates capabilities of custom VMs and custom blockchains. For more information, see: Create a Virtual Machine

TimestampVM is served over RPC with go-plugin.

🚀 Start the custom VM (on fuji network)

docker run --privileged -ti -d -p 9650:9650 -p 9651:9651 -v ~/.avalanchego:/root/.avalanchego fairhivelabs/timestampvm /avalanchego/build/avalanchego --http-host 0.0.0.0 --network-id fuji --dynamic-public-ip ifconfig

🙈 Encode static service

curl -s -X POST --data '{
    "jsonrpc": "2.0",
    "method": "timestampvm.encode",
    "params":{
        "data":"acme custom vm",
	"length": 32
    },
    "id": 1
}' -H 'content-type:application/json;' 127.0.0.1:9650/ext/vm/n6B2UdbyGWn8modJUZQ1RivVUbVdn5hwcFKnE9bf1KLZGPjNX | jq

you should get :

{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "result": {
    "bytes": "jtf2eXz63ezRvMHcZXke7BsDftSEHWRQ9AYvQdUuMw6VekRgj",
    "encoding": "cb58"
  },
  "id": 1
}

🐵 Decode static service

curl -s -X POST --data '{
    "jsonrpc": "2.0",
    "method": "timestampvm.decode",
    "params":{
        "bytes": "tGas3T58KzdjLHhBDMnH2TvrddhqTji5iZAMZ3RXs2NLpSnhH"
    },
    "id": 1
}' -H 'content-type:application/json;' 127.0.0.1:9650/ext/vm/n6B2UdbyGWn8modJUZQ1RivVUbVdn5hwcFKnE9bf1KLZGPjNX | jq

and you should get :

{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "result": {
    "data": "timestamp\u0000\u0000\u0000\u0000\u0000\u0000\u0000\u0000\u0000\u0000\u0000\u0000\u0000\u0000\u0000\u0000\u0000\u0000\u0000\u0000\u0000\u0000\u0000",
    "encoding": "cb58"
  },
  "id": 1
}