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Building the Chronicler Project

At Lisk.js 2019 our team Sidechain Solutions demonstrated a new project called Chronicler. This consists of a Proof-of-Concept blockchain to store, audit or verify various types of content, and was developed using the Lisk SDK. It now has a fully functioning network of 11 delegates that prove the reliability and ease of configuration related to the Lisk SDK.

By Lisk

18 Jun 2020

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What are the use cases?

Recently decentralization has met the core of discussion with regard to information security. Maintaining archived data in a secure, permanent and accessible fashion has become a difficult task. A detailed list with more information on the actions provided by this concept can be seen below:

  • Create searchable archives tied to an address
  • Produce time-stamped chain of custody for digital assets
  • Audit web content for censorship and edits
  • Verify your own content for transparency
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How does it work?

On the front end, Chronicler provides you with two base options. You can view the Chronicler Client code or try it yourself here.

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Submit archive:

  • Collects the form fields needed to process the transaction including: [title] [archival type] [file/text] [passphrase]
  • Convert files to Base 91 for higher efficiency storage
  • Broadcast prepared text or binary transaction to Chronicler blockchain

View archive:

  • Submit an address to search for an archive
  • Presents text content or binary for download depending on the option chosen.

Custom transactions

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The included custom transactions are among the few actual changes needed to the stock Lisk SDK codebase to enable all the required functionality for our purposes.

Listed below are the properties of the Custom transactions:

archiveTextTransaction

  • Type: 101
  • Format: Text
  • Description: Plain text and HTML markup
  • Size (CHAR): 20000
  • Fee: 10

archiveBinaryTransaction

  • Type: 102
  • Format: Binary
  • Description: Images, Executables, PDF
  • Size (CHAR): 1000000
  • Fee: 1000

In both transactions, the maximum character size that can be included with a standard TX has been increased, and their fixed fees are relative to the data payload size. Besides some validation, the front end mostly coordinates how the data is handled.

The future

We had hopes that we would take this particular concept to market, but after careful deliberation we have decided to focus on another more lucrative idea instead. Chronicler was built on an earlier version of the SDK, hence it will need to be upgraded soon. We will continue to maintain the project for as long as it is relevant learning material. More info about our new project will be released within the next few months.

Disclaimer: This blog post was written by our community member, StellarDynamic Lisk.chat username: Stellardynamic as part of his participation inthe Lisk Builders program