Adblockchain

RMIT Capstone Project
_{Edward Rossi, Liam Jeynes and Matthew Samuel}

Table of Contents

• About
• Screenshots
• Dependencies
• Usage / Development Setup
  • Browser Extension
  • Ganache
  • IPFS

About

Adblockchain is a proof of concept for Edward Rossi and Ibrahim Khalil's conference paper, 'Novel Online Revenue Paradigms: Using Blockchain to Restore the Sacrosanctity of Content Online'.

It is a chromium extension that monitors what sites a user visits and transfers a certain amount of cryptocurrency per page view to those sites. So long as the user has enough money in their digital wallet, advertisements on the page will also be blocked.

Users can additionally view analytics of their spending history.

Ethereum was used as the cryptocurrency of choice and IPFS was used as a decentralized database to store each site's public key.

Screenshots

Popup Window	Analytics Page

Dependencies

• Node.js
• Ganache
• IPFS

Usage / Development Setup

In order to set the correct values from our personal blockchain and offline IPFS node, a config.js file must be created and placed in the root directory of the project.

The template file config.js.example details what the config.js should look like:

export const IPNS_ADDRESS = '/ipns/QmWrQMTnkK4PdmYJgbwwoafRp7VKTiRkruTrG9BjqzEeYD';
export const IPNS_KEY = 'QmWrQMTnkK4PdmYJgbwwoafRp7VKTiRkruTrG9BjqzEeYD';

Getting these values will be explained when setting up IPFS.

Browser Extension

To install the necessary node.js dependencies navigate to the root directory and type:

$ npm install

Building the Extension

Navigate to the root directory and run the following to compile the source files:

$ npm run build

Building the Extension (Live Reload)

Navigate to the root directory and run the following to build the source files as well as recompile whenever a file is changed :

$ npm run start

Running Unit Tests

Navigate to the root directory and run the following to run all unit tests using Jest:

$ npm run test

Adding the Extension to Chrome

Go to the address chrome://extensions/ and enable 'Developer mode' in the toolbar.

Click on 'Load unpacked' and select the /build directory.

The build folder should now be linked such that every time you run the build command the extension should be updated automatically.

NOTE: Both Ganache and the IPFS daemon should be running in the background for the extension to function properly.

Ganache

Starting Ganache

To run the Ganche CLI navigate to the root directory and run the following command:

$ npx ganache-cli

After some setup, you should now have a personal Ethereum blockchain that you can access at http://localhost:8545.

Accounts

To login and use the application you will need an Ethereum account with some Ether.

When running Ganache CLI there will be an output similar to the following:

Available Accounts
==================
(0) 0x523C0bB9Ad4Ef59D3A1E473cBA5A896B89459D49 (100 ETH)
...

Private Keys
==================
(0) 0xf013cec05bba903906183f6e42286318e6833df608fb01c00d9728f5c0f2e182
...

These are the login credentials for ten auto generated accounts with 100 ETH each. You can us any of following public keys from 'Available Accounts' and the corresponding private key from 'Private Keys' to login.

IPFS

Running the IPFS Daemon

After installing the IPFS CLI, you'll need to enable cross-origin resource sharing for your node with the following command:

$ ipfs config --json API.HTTPHeaders '{"Access-Control-Allow-Origin": ["*"]}'

Then run the IPFS daemon with the following command:

$ ipfs daemon --offline

Your IPFS node should now be accessible at http://localhost:5001

Generating an IPNS Key and Address

To generate an IPNS key, use the following command:

$ ipfs key gen --type=rsa --size=2048 capstone

Which should should output a key similar to QmTBUGfsq5S3o3hj4NQhVPdEpC7ZsKRYnx1DwHSRrP2q3d.

And to get the IPNS address associated with your key, input the following commands:

$ HASH=$(echo "{}" | ipfs add | awk {'print $2'})
$ ipfs name publish --key={your_ipns_key} $HASH --allow-offline | awk '{print substr($3, 1, length($3)-1)}'

The output, when prefixed with /ipns/ is your IPNS address.

You can now replace both the IPNS_KEY and IPNS_ADDRESS in your config.js file with your own values