blockchain on RPi

Question

I am just starting on the blockchain, bitcoin etc... I read 'Mastering BitCoin...2nd Edition' from O'reilly to start with and some articles from the internet. I want to build my own little blockchain network using two RaspberryPi. I am planning to have two c++ programs running on each RaspberryPi, this C++ program will generate some data. This data becomes payload for the next block. One of the two RaspberryPi will mine it, add it to its blockchain and publish the new block, the other one will accept and add to the chain.

My question is 1. Is it possible to do with libbitcoin on RaspberryPi? With libbitcoin, I have the impression that I cannot put arbitrary type of data in the block. 2. Or ethereum on RaspberryPi?

Thanks in advance for any guidance.

bitCurious

Answer 1

I have had some experience with RasPI and live bitcoin client. Compiled it on a SuSE Linux. For a live client, the RasPI 2B+ was way too slow to run with live data stream (blockchain). Neither Bitcoin nor Ethereum would work sufficiently today. Only in "pruned" node. However it is a fantastic device for playing with testnet or regtest. Bitcoin Mining on testnet might be slow (I haven't tried), but you are not competing. Even better would be to use regtest, then you don't even need to mine a block. Full development stack ahead! I cannot say how this works out with Ethereum though. Last year I had severe problems in syncing the client with GETH... The limitation of the RasPI is the fairly slow due to the possible I/O cycles to the harddisk (SD card). Also connecting an SSD via USB doesn't help much.

So Q1: yes, you can use libbitcoin, and Q2: I leave it to other experts who have played with Ethereum. Maybe ask in the specific forum: https://forum.ethereum.org/discussion/1025/raspberry-pi