Canonical source: https://git.communitycoins.org/Rings-Of-Trust/Ring-Of-Trust-service
Mirrors (GitLab/GitHub) may be read-only and may lag behind.

ROT Server

This project provides the reference implementation of a ROT (Ring of Trust) SPV server for CommunityCoins.
The current implementation is written in PHP (rot.php). It provides an SPV layer itself, enabling wallets to interact with the blockchain in a decentralized and lightweight way.

⚠️ A separate proxy layer is envisioned for near future release. That proxy will serve as a public relay and directory: listing supported coins, and per coin the available ROT servers (IP, port, and status).

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What is Ring of Trust (ROT)?

The Ring of Trust (ROT) is a decentralized architecture for CommunityCoins wallets.
Instead of relying on a open accessible central servers, ROT proxies distribute trust across multiple teams and nodes:

• Each coin team runs one or more ROT proxies.
• Anyone that has a running core-wallet can run a ROT server out of loyalty to a coin and its community
• Proxies act as neutral relays — they do not validate or censor, only serve.
• Both wallets and SPV(ROT) servers discover proxies from a central bootstrap list, then operate autonomously.
• SPV services must conform strictly to protocol. Misbehaving nodes are warned or excluded.

ROT separates coin governance (teams, proxies) from service provision (SPV nodes).
This ensures no single point of failure and keeps wallet UX simple for end-users.

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Documentation

Additional background and design documents can be found in the /docs directory:

• Motivation – why ROT is needed, including ecosystem challenges (declining nodes, lack of incentives, browser restrictions).
• Considerations – design choices and trade-offs in the ROT architecture.

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Further Reading

Three articles further motivate design choices for the ROT implementation:

• Why We Choose Legacy
• Rethinking SPV
• Enhanced Stateless, Poll-Optimized Light Client Network Architecture: A Technical Analysis

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Status

second release (v0.2). Accomodated to serve in a zero-touch docker compose setup (service rot:) using environment variables : e-Gulden example

first release (v0.1.0).
Early stage software – many features are still TODO, and breaking changes are expected.

The main goal of this release is to:

• Understanding the design – how ROT structures SPV services and governance.
• Testing the implementation – teams can already deploy and experiment with rot.php.
• Gathering feedback – insights from early users will guide improvements toward a stable v1.0.0.

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Contributing

Contributions are welcome!

This project is still early stage, so even small contributions make a big difference:

• Testing and reporting bugs.
• Sharing feedback on the design considerations.
• Improving documentation.
• Suggesting or discussing features.

Don't hesitate — your perspective helps shape ROT into a robust, decentralized SPV layer.
See the Issue Board for an overview of tasks and progress.
You can also browse the full Issues list.

Requirements

• PHP 7.4 - 8.3 CLI (with shmop enabled)
• Linux environment (tested on Ubuntu / Docker)
• Access to a local blockchain core (tested on egulden(EFL), auroracoin(AUR), canadaecoin(CDN), deutche emark(DEM) and cryptoescudo(CESC))

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▶️ Usage

Run the server:

#!/usr/bin/env bashbash
php rot.php --config="/var/<ecoincore>/rot/<coin>/rot.conf" 

If no php is available we would advice installing/using docker and create a virtual php-image as such:

Dockerfile:

FROM php:8.3-cli

RUN docker-php-ext-install shmop

bash / script:

docker build -t cc-php-rot:8.3 .

and use it as such

bash / script:

\[ -z "$1" ] \&\& { echo "Usage: $0 <coin>"; exit 2; }

docker rm -f "rot-$1" >/dev/null 2>\&1 || true

ECOINCORE="/var/data/communitycoins"

COIN="$1"

docker run -d \\
 --name "rot-$COIN" \\
 --network host \\
 --log-driver=none \\
-v "$ECOINCORE:$ECOINCORE" \\
cc-php-rot:8.3 php \\
 -d memory\_limit=2G \\
 -d log\_errors=1 \\
 -d error\_reporting=E\_ALL \\
 -d display\_errors=1 \\
 -d error\_log="/var/data/communitycoins/rot/rot\_$COIN.log" \\
$ECOINCORE/rot/rot.php --config="$ECOINCORE/$COIN/rot/rot.conf"

If you run multiple core-wallets you might have this directory-structures

communitycoins/
├── rot/
│   ├── Dockerfile
│   ├── rot.php
│   └── rot.sh
├── aur/
│   ├── blockchain/
│   └── rot/
│       └── rot.conf
├── boli/
│   ├── blockchain/
│   └── rot/
│       └── rot.conf
├── cdn/
├── cesc/
├── dem/
├── efl/
├── fjc/
├── pak/
├── rubtc/
├── slg/
├── efl/

With these commands you have ease control over the ROT infrastructure:

# Show running spv-servers and their status
docker ps -a --filter name='rot-' --format 'table {{.Names}}\t{{.Status}}'

# start a single server
./rot.sh efl

# stop a single server
docker stop rot-efl