🚀 Ghost - A next-generation blockchain with hybrid Proof-of-Work (PoW) and Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus, designed for speed, security, and energy efficiency.

• Hybrid Consensus: Combines PoW security with PoS efficiency
• Entropy-Steered Consensus (ESC): Dynamics difficulty adjustment based on network decentralization (Shannon Entropy)
• Quantum-Resistant Finality: Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) using Crystals-Dilithium signatures for block finalization
• Fast Block Times: 5-second block production
• ASIC-Resistant Mining: Enhanced Blake2-256 algorithm
• Weighted PoS: Stake-based validator selection
• Energy Efficient: Optimized for low computational cost
• Built on Substrate: Leverages Polkadot SDK for robustness

Ghost uses a revolutionary hybrid approach:

1. PoW Phase: Miners compete using ASIC-resistant Blake2-256
2. ESC Layer: Difficulty is dynamically steered by network entropy to prevent centralization
3. PoS Phase: Validators selected by stake weight sign blocks using PQC (Dilithium-5)
4. Reward Distribution: 40% to miners, 60% to stakers
5. Slashing: Penalties for double-signing, invalid blocks, and downtime

• Block Time: 5 seconds
• PoW Algorithm: Enhanced Blake2-256 (ASIC-resistant)
• Entropy Threshold: 4.0 (for ESC difficulty steering)
• Signature Scheme: Dilithium-5 (Post-Quantum Secure)
• Consensus: Hybrid PoW + Weighted PoS + ESC
• Token: Ghost (GHTM)
• Block Reward: 10 GHOST per block
• Minimum Stake: 1 GHOST token

Before running the full node, you can verify the consensus math using the provided scripts:

# Simulate Entropy-Steered Consensus difficulty adjustment
python3 scripts/simulate_esc.py

# Test PQC Dilithium-5 signature verification (requires Rust + pqcrypto)
rustc scripts/test_pqc.rs --extern pqcrypto_dilithium -L ./target/debug/deps
./test_pqc

Depending on your operating system and Rust version, there might be additional packages required to compile this template. Check the Install instructions for your platform for the most common dependencies. Alternatively, you can use one of the alternative installation options.

Fetch solochain template code:

git clone https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk-solochain-template.git solochain-template

cd solochain-template

🔨 Use the following command to build the Ghost node:

# Build in release mode (recommended for production)
cargo build --release --bin ghost-node

# Build in debug mode (faster for development)
cargo build --bin ghost-node

After building, test the Ghost-specific CLI commands:

# Test main help
./target/release/ghost-node --help

# Test Ghost commands
./target/release/ghost-node ghost --help

# Test consensus status
./target/release/ghost-node ghost status --detailed

# Test mining command
./target/release/ghost-node ghost mine --threads 4

You can generate and view the Rust Docs for this template with this command:

cargo +nightly doc --open

The following command starts a single-node Ghost development chain:

# Start development chain
./target/release/ghost-node --dev

# Start with custom base path
./target/release/ghost-node --dev --base-path ./ghost-chain-data

To purge the development chain's state, run the following command:

./target/release/ghost-node purge-chain --dev

To start the development chain with detailed logging, run the following command:

RUST_BACKTRACE=1 ./target/release/ghost-node -ldebug --dev

Once your node is running, you can interact with it using Ghost-specific commands:

# Check consensus status
./target/release/ghost-node ghost status --detailed

# Start mining (when implemented)
./target/release/ghost-node ghost mine --threads 4

# Stake tokens for validation
./target/release/ghost-node ghost stake --amount 1000

# Check your balance
./target/release/ghost-node ghost balance

Development chains:

• Maintain state in a tmp folder while the node is running.
• Use the Alice and Bob accounts as default validator authorities.
• Use the Alice account as the default sudo account.
• Are preconfigured with a genesis state (/node/src/chain_spec.rs) that includes several pre-funded development accounts.

To persist chain state between runs, specify a base path by running a command similar to the following:

# Create a folder to use as the db base path
$ mkdir ghost-chain-state

# Use of that folder to store the chain state
$ ./target/release/ghost-node --dev --base-path ./ghost-chain-state

# Check the folder structure created inside the base path after running the chain
$ ls ./ghost-chain-state
chains
$ ls ./ghost-chain-state/chains/
dev
$ ls ./ghost-chain-state/chains/dev
db keystore network

The core of Ghost's hybrid consensus is implemented in the pallet-ghost-consensus:

• Location: pallets/pallet-ghost-consensus/
• Features:
  • PoW mining with ASIC-resistant Blake2-256
  • Entropy-Steered Consensus (ESC) for decentralization
  • Quantum-Resistant Finality via Dilithium-5
  • Weighted PoS validator selection
  • Block reward distribution (40/60 split)
  • Slashing for misbehavior
  • Staking functionality

Key files:

• src/lib.rs: Main pallet implementation
• src/types.rs: Consensus data structures
• src/functions.rs: Core consensus algorithms
• src/consensus.rs: Consensus engine integration

After you start the node template locally, you can interact with it using the hosted version of the Polkadot/Substrate Portal front-end by connecting to the local node endpoint. A hosted version is also available on IPFS. You can also find the source code and instructions for hosting your own instance in the polkadot-js/apps repository.

If you want to see the multi-node consensus algorithm in action, see Simulate a network.

A Substrate project such as this consists of a number of components that are spread across a few directories.

A blockchain node is an application that allows users to participate in a blockchain network. Substrate-based blockchain nodes expose a number of capabilities:

• Networking: Substrate nodes use the libp2p networking stack to allow the nodes in the network to communicate with one another.
• Consensus: Blockchains must have a way to come to consensus on the state of the network. Substrate makes it possible to supply custom consensus engines and also ships with several consensus mechanisms that have been built on top of Web3 Foundation research.
• RPC Server: A remote procedure call (RPC) server is used to interact with Substrate nodes.

There are several files in the node directory. Take special note of the following:

• chain_spec.rs: A chain specification is a source code file that defines a Substrate chain's initial (genesis) state. Chain specifications are useful for development and testing, and critical when architecting the launch of a production chain. Take note of the development_config and testnet_genesis functions. These functions are used to define the genesis state for the local development chain configuration. These functions identify some well-known accounts and use them to configure the blockchain's initial state.
• service.rs: This file defines the node implementation. Take note of the libraries that this file imports and the names of the functions it invokes. In particular, there are references to consensus-related topics, such as the block finalization and forks and other consensus mechanisms such as Aura for block authoring and GRANDPA for finality.

In Substrate, the terms "runtime" and "state transition function" are analogous. Both terms refer to the core logic of the blockchain that is responsible for validating blocks and executing the state changes they define. The Substrate project in this repository uses FRAME to construct a blockchain runtime. FRAME allows runtime developers to declare domain-specific logic in modules called "pallets". At the heart of FRAME is a helpful macro language that makes it easy to create pallets and flexibly compose them to create blockchains that can address a variety of needs.

Review the FRAME runtime implementation included in this template and note the following:

• This file configures several pallets to include in the runtime. Each pallet configuration is defined by a code block that begins with impl $PALLET_NAME::Config for Runtime.
• The pallets are composed into a single runtime by way of the #[runtime] macro, which is part of the core FRAME pallet library.

The runtime in this project is constructed using many FRAME pallets that ship with the Substrate repository and a template pallet that is defined in the pallets directory.

A FRAME pallet is comprised of a number of blockchain primitives, including:

• Storage: FRAME defines a rich set of powerful storage abstractions that makes it easy to use Substrate's efficient key-value database to manage the evolving state of a blockchain.
• Dispatchables: FRAME pallets define special types of functions that can be invoked (dispatched) from outside of the runtime in order to update its state.
• Events: Substrate uses events to notify users of significant state changes.
• Errors: When a dispatchable fails, it returns an error.

Each pallet has its own Config trait which serves as a configuration interface to generically define the types and parameters it depends on.

Instead of installing dependencies and building this source directly, consider the following alternatives.

Install nix and nix-direnv for a fully plug-and-play experience for setting up the development environment. To get all the correct dependencies, activate direnv direnv allow.

Please follow the Substrate Docker instructions here to build the Docker container with the Substrate Node Template binary.