Unlock the Power of Blockchain Development
With the average blockchain developer salary reaching $154,550/year, now is an excellent time to dive into this exciting field. And the best part? You don’t need to be a cryptography expert to get started. If you have a basic understanding of JavaScript, you’re ready to begin.
Understanding the Basics
Before we dive into the world of blockchain development, let’s define two essential terms: the blockchain and a bitcoin transaction. The blockchain is an immutable, distributed database that records a global log of transactions. A block in the blockchain is similar to a record in traditional databases. A bitcoin transaction, on the other hand, is the transfer of value from one bitcoin wallet to another that gets included in the blockchain.
Setting Up a Testnet Wallet
To get started, we need a Testnet wallet and some bitcoins to play with. You can generate a Testnet wallet using a website or bitcore-core. I’ve generated one for demonstration purposes:
Private key = 93F2mUJPKbXW8Q9cMNz4ZmpsjgTbNjrMeCaUesTPE7k1DFhSmnk
Address = mtVE8anM63kQcgKUC6oQQD9K6xiV4wsr7q
Let’s send some bitcoin to this address using a bitcoin Testnet faucet website. Now that we have some bitcoin in our wallet, we can create a simple Node.js application to send bitcoin.
Building a Node.js Application
We’ll use the Bitcore open-source library and Axios to interface with the blockchain. Create an index.js file and import the Bitcore and Axios libraries. Then, create a function sendBitcoin that will send the bitcoin.
Unspent Outputs and Transaction Fees
Unspent outputs are the transactions you received to your bitcoin wallet that have not been spent. To find out how many outputs we have in our wallet, we’ll use the SoChain block explorer. We’ll then use this data to build new inputs and calculate the transaction fee.
Building New Inputs and Setting the Transaction Fee
From the unspent outputs, we’ll build a new input equal to the unspent outputs. We’ll grab the essential elements of the outputs we need to create new inputs from the unspent output array. Then, we’ll set the transaction inputs and deal with the bitcoin transaction fees.
Setting the Bitcoin Receiver Address, Amount to Send, and Fees
Now that we’ve calculated the fees and verified that we have enough balance to cover the transaction, we can set the receiving address and fees with the Bitcore API.
Setting Up the Bitcoin Change Address
We’ll use the Bitcore function transaction.change to set the change address, which is our address – the address we want to receive the balance paid into after sending to the receiver.
Signing and Serializing the Transaction
Before we can spend bitcoin in a wallet, we must have the private key of that wallet. We’ll sign the transaction using the private key and serialize the transaction to get the transaction hex.
Broadcasting the Bitcoin Transaction
Finally, we’ll broadcast the transaction to the blockchain through the SoChain node with a post request to the API.
Congratulations! You’ve Successfully Sent Bitcoin
You can now call the sendBitcoin function and pass the receiver’s bitcoin address and the amount you wish to send to send bitcoin to anyone.
What’s Next?
There’s a lot more to learn about the blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and how to work with them. This tutorial should provide you with basic information on how to use JavaScript to send bitcoin from your wallet. From here, you can build upon your knowledge and explore more advanced topics.
Happy Hacking!
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