Setup BCH with Bitcore (bitcore-node v3.1.3)

Requirments

• Bitpay's custom bitcoin-abc (https://github.com/bitprim/bitcoin-abc/tree/tag0.17.1-bitcore)
  • Bitcore-node uses special RPC commands (list of additional RPC commands) that bitcoin-abc needs to support.
  • bitcoin-abc needs to be built from source, the instructions on how to build it can be found under doc.

Installation

Once you have the custom bitcoind from above, we can follow the standard bitcore installation guide:

npm install -g bitcore
bitcore create mynode-abc && cd mynode-abc
bitcore install osagga/insight-api#cash_v4 insight-ui

The script above will install the default bitcore (v3) from npm and install the customized insight-api (optional) and the standard insight-ui

Configuration

The basic trick here is that we would run bitcoin-abc with usecashaddr=0 and force it to use the legacy BTC addresses, and that way, the bitcore node will interact with bitcoin-abc as if it's a normal BTC node.

(Optional) The another trick that I did is to modify the insight-api such that it converts the BTC legacy addresses back to BCH new addresses before serving api requests.

By default, if you use the standard insight-api, you can only use BTC legacy addresses. If you want to enable BCH address handling, consider using my fork on the api on github.com/osagga/insight-api/tree/cash_v4

Config Samples

There are two main config file that we need to take care of:

• bitcore-node.json, this controls the bitcore-node

{
    "network": "livenet",
    "port": 3001,
    "services": [
      "bitcoind",
      "insight-api",
      "insight-ui",
      "web"
    ],
    "servicesConfig": {
      "insight-ui": {
          "routePrefix": "",
          "apiPrefix": "api"
      },
      "insight-api": {
          "routePrefix": "api",
          "disableRateLimiter": true
      },
      "bitcoind": {
        "spawn": {
          "datadir": "./data", // Path to where bitcoind would sava data and load the config file.
          "exec": ["FULL-PATH/TO/BITCOIND"] // The one you built from source
        }
      }
    }
  }

• "data/bitcoin.conf" this controls the bitcoin-node (bitcoin-abc)

server=1

whitelist=127.0.0.1

# This can be anything you need
port=18449 

# This is IMPORTANT, without it, bitcoin-abc will use BCH addresses
usecashaddr=0 

txindex=1
addressindex=1
timestampindex=1
spentindex=1

zmqpubrawtx=tcp://127.0.0.1:28331
zmqpubhashblock=tcp://127.0.0.1:28331

# The RPC commands below are custom, you can change it to whatever
rpcallowip=127.0.0.1
rpcuser=bitcoin
rpcpassword=local321
rpcport=18447

# I don't believe this line is needed, but I just leave it
uacomment=bitcore

Once everything is setup, you can simply start the node with (while in the folder mynode-abc)

bitcore start

You can also access the the User Interface on localhost:[port-from-config]/