We describe Bitcoin transactions, restricted transactions called Covenants, and our own research into secure Bitcoin custody using a type of Covenant called Vaults.

Introduction

Custody sits core to digital asset infrastructure and is dictated by key management. Keys are what generate signatures that can spend bitcoins, and thus, key management determines how digital assets are held and secured. The problem the FCAT team tried to solve was the access, incentives and corresponding attack surfaces that are presented when keys, or a set of keys, are compromised. In that, attackers can arbitrarily spend bitcoins custodied by those compromised keys at will.

The…

In this post we will be going over Algorand wallet security and wallet and account interaction. Specifically we will be looking at the steps and mechanisms involved in:

• Generating a wallet
• Generating accounts in the wallet
• Generating accounts outside of the wallet and importing them into the wallet
• Backing up a wallet
• Backing up a specific account that is within a wallet
• Recovering a wallet
• Recovering accounts that were generated within a wallet
• Importing multi-signature accounts into a wallet

Please make sure you have an Algorand TestNet node running and make sure that you start the kmd process.

goal kmd…

In our previous posts we looked what Opting into an Algorand Asset was and how to build a reactive front-end component using React in anticipation of Algorand 2.0. In this post, we will look at what creating an account on Algorand looks like in JavaScript, as well as constructing a transaction object, signing the transaction and broadcasting the transaction to the network.

Main Methods

We will be using a few methods from the algosdk to make all of this happen:

1. generateAccount() returns a new Algorand address and its corresponding secret key
2. mnemonicToSecretKey() takes a mnemonic string and returns the corresponding Algorand address…

Running a node on Algorand is a very fast and straightforward process.

Sandbox makes the process of node creation and configuration seamless with several helpful commands for containerization and process management. It is simply a quick and easy way to create and configure an Algorand node using Docker.

Why use Sandbox?

Sandbox simplifies the process of node configuration and maintenance allowing you to quickly spin up a containerized node on any of the three Algorand networks as well as managing it through the sandbox environment.

Note: Sandbox is directed at learning and not meant for production.

How to Use Sandbox

First, make sure you have Docker installed…

Algorand now has assets!

Great… so,

• what are these assets?
• how can I use them?
• what is this “opting in” ?

Algorand Standard Asset or ASA is a Layer-1 feature that enables the creation and representation of any asset, digitally on the Algorand blockchain. The benefits of implementing these sorts of asset management features into the base layer protocol is for the enhanced security, compatibility and efficiency guarantees that are offered for any Layer-1 Algorand transaction.

In this post, we are going to create an asset using goal and then use React to “opt into” receiving the asset.goal is the…

Docker containers have become incredibly popular improving ease of use, scalability and reproducibility. Running Algorand on Docker replicates those benefits quite nicely.

In a Nutshell

Docker takes your operating systems and splits it into several self-contained areas where applications can run. This is very similar to the concept of a virtual machine where developers take a single OS and divide it into many small OS’ — in this case, each divided area thinks that it is running on its own system. The problem with this approach is that it is quite resource intensive and it is not ideal to run many VM’s on…