A lightweight Bitcoin block mining simulator and transaction validation engine built from scratch

BitMiner is an educational implementation of Bitcoin's core mining and transaction validation mechanisms. Built without relying on Bitcoin-specific libraries, this project demonstrates the fundamental cryptographic and algorithmic principles that power Bitcoin's proof-of-work consensus.

• Transaction Validation: Validates Bitcoin transactions from scratch using cryptographic primitives
• Block Mining Simulation: Implements proof-of-work mining algorithm with configurable difficulty targets
• Mempool Processing: Efficiently processes and prioritizes transactions based on fee rates
• Block Construction: Constructs valid Bitcoin blocks including coinbase transactions
• Zero External Bitcoin Libraries: Built using only standard cryptographic libraries (secp256k1, SHA-256)

• Rust 1.70+ (or your language runtime)
• Standard cryptographic libraries

git clone https://github.com/benodiwal/BitMiner.git
cd BitMiner

1. Place transaction JSON files in the mempool/ directory
2. Run the mining simulation:

bash run.sh

3. The mined block will be output to output.txt with the following structure:
   • Line 1: Block header
   • Line 2: Serialized coinbase transaction
   • Line 3+: Transaction IDs included in the block

1. Transaction Parsing: Reads and parses transactions from the mempool
2. Validation: Validates each transaction using cryptographic signatures and script verification
3. Fee Optimization: Selects transactions to maximize fee collection while respecting block size limits
4. Coinbase Creation: Generates coinbase transaction with block reward and collected fees
5. Mining: Iterates through nonce values to find a block hash below the difficulty target

The default difficulty target is:

0000ffff00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

This can be configured to simulate different mining difficulties.

Customize mining parameters by modifying the configuration:

• Difficulty target
• Block size limits
• Fee calculation methods
• Validation rules

Note: This is an educational implementation for learning purposes. It is not intended for production use or actual Bitcoin mining.

For questions or feedback, please open an issue on GitHub.