core

ngcore is the Go implementation of ngchain: a post-quantum, account-based proof-of-work chain with a private-by-default mempool and a programmable, WebAssembly contract layer — designed by subtraction.

📄 The full protocol specification lives at paper.ngchain.org. This README is a short orientation and a build/run guide; the paper is authoritative for every consensus rule, byte layout and constant.

The model in one paragraph

An Address (32 bytes, the BLAKE3 hash of a public key under its scheme) is the identity, the balance holder and the namespace — nothing is registered, any key spends directly. A Contract is the compiled WebAssembly module an address may open under its own namespace. Three transaction operations act on this: Generate (the mining reward), Transact (pay an address and run its contract), and Deploy (create, upgrade UUPS-style, or destroy the sender's own contract). That is the whole ontology.

What's distinctive

• Post-quantum by construction — a BLAKE3-256 content hash and four account signature schemes: secp256k1 plus the post-quantum FN-DSA, ML-DSA and SLH-DSA. Keys reveal their public key once (auto-registered), later spends carry only From ‖ sig.
• A private mempool, by default — every effect tx is the reveal half of a mandatory commit–reveal, so contents stay hidden from miners until the committing block is sealed. Both halves are relayed by the node, so a wallet sends one call and may go offline.
• UUPS contracts — deploy / upgrade / destroy are one operation; upgrade logic lives in the contract (ng:upgrade), and a contract with no such hook is immutable.
• Native account abstraction — an account installs an ng:validate hook the protocol runs on every one of its txs (spend limits, freezes, allow-lists), on top of the native signature.
• Reserved ng: hooks — ng:main / ng:init / ng:upgrade / ng:validate are protocol-bound; every other export is an ordinary method.

See the paper for consensus (astrobwt PoW, cumulative-work fork choice, GHOST uncles), the two block roots (content + witness), and the full contract VM and host ABI.

Quick start

go build -o ngcore ./cmd/ngcore

# a throwaway local chain
./ngcore --zeronet --in-mem

# wallet — keys stay local; only signed txs travel
./ngcore cli key --new --scheme secp256k1
./ngcore cli status
./ngcore cli balance

# send / deploy are private by default: the node relays the commit-reveal,
# so these return immediately and land over the next few blocks
./ngcore cli send   --to <bs58> --value 1.5 --fee 0.0001
./ngcore cli deploy --file contract.wasm --fee 0.0001   # first deploy goes live
./ngcore cli call   --contract <bs58> --entry balance_of

# fork a running chain for contract debugging (lazy, anvil-style)
./ngcore fork --rpc http://127.0.0.1:52521   # serves its own rpc on :52525

Docs

• paper.ngchain.org — the protocol specification: consensus, state, transactions, the private mempool, the contract VM, account abstraction, and a security/threat-model section;
• docs.ngchain.org — the practical docs: getting started, wallet and contract workflows, and the JSON-RPC reference (the source of truth for the method set is the registry in jsonrpc/).

Status

Experimental. Consensus formats change freely between versions and dev chains restart; MAINNET parameters are intentionally undefined.