This is the integration and staging tree for the Elements blockchain platform, a collection of feature experiments and extensions to the Bitcoin protocol. This platform enables anyone to build their own businesses or networks pegged to Bitcoin as a sidechain or run as a standalone blockchain with arbitrary asset tokens.
Elements supports a few different pre-set chains for syncing. Note though some are intended for QA and debugging only:
- Liquid mode:
elementsd -chain=liquidv1(syncs with Liquid network) - Bitcoin mainnet mode:
elementsd -chain=main(not intended to be run for commerce) - Bitcoin testnet mode:
elementsd -chain=testnet3 - Bitcoin regtest mode:
elementsd -chain=regtest - Elements custom chains: Any other
-chain=argument. It has regtest-like default parameters that can be over-ridden by the user by a rich set of start-up options.
The latest feature in the Elements blockchain platform is Confidential Assets, the ability to issue multiple assets on a blockchain where asset identifiers and amounts are blinded yet auditable through the use of applied cryptography.
- Announcement of Confidential Assets
- Confidential Assets Whitepaper to be presented April 7th at Financial Cryptography 2017 in Malta
- Confidential Assets Tutorial
- Confidential Assets Demo
- Elements Code Tutorial covering blockchain configuration and how to use the main features.
Compared to Bitcoin itself, it adds the following features:
- Confidential Assets
- Confidential Transactions
- Federated Two-Way Peg
- Signed Blocks
- Additional opcodes
Previous elements that have been integrated into Bitcoin:
- Segregated Witness
- Relative Lock Time
Elements deferred for additional research and standardization:
Additional RPC commands and parameters:
The CI (Continuous Integration) systems make sure that every pull request is built for Windows, Linux, and macOS, and that unit/sanity tests are run automatically.
Elements is released under the terms of the MIT license. See COPYING for more information or see http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT.
Elements is an open source, sidechain-capable blockchain platform. It also allows experiments to more rapidly bring technical innovation to the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Learn more on the Elements Project website
https://github.com/ElementsProject/elementsproject.github.io