Ghost Blockchain

Ghost is a Substrate-based blockchain under active development. The current branch contains a Ghost consensus pallet, CLI helpers, and native build/test support, but it is not yet a live hybrid PoW/PoS testnet.

Current State

• The node service still uses Aura for block authoring and GRANDPA for finality.
• The pallet-ghost-consensus code path contains Ghost PoW/PoS/PQC logic, but it is not yet the block production engine.
• Native pallet/runtime tests and a full embedded-Wasm node build are available with the documented Substrate toolchain.
• A local Aura/GRANDPA two-validator smoke test passes via scripts/e2e-local.sh.
• Dilithium5 verification is present for native/std paths, but the runtime no_std/Wasm PQC path is not yet a completed testnet-ready feature.

What Works Now

• pallet-ghost-consensus unit tests.
• Embedded-Wasm node builds.
• Single-node dev authoring.
• Two-node local authoring and GRANDPA finality on the Aura/GRANDPA path.
• Ghost CLI helpers such as ghost status, ghost mine, ghost stake, and ghost balance in native mode.
• Development account setup for Alice and Bob in the chain spec.

What Is Still Pending

• Wiring Ghost consensus into live block authoring and finality.
• Reliable reward attribution and distribution through the live block path.
• Multi-node E2E testing on the actual Ghost consensus path.
• Runtime PQC verification that works in no_std/Wasm.

Build

Use the local smoke test first:

rtk scripts/e2e-local.sh

For a manual full build:

rtk env \
  WASM_BUILD_WORKSPACE_HINT=$PWD \
  LIBCLANG_PATH=/lib/llvm-18/lib \
  BINDGEN_EXTRA_CLANG_ARGS="-I/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/13/include -I/usr/include/x86_64-linux-gnu -I/usr/include" \
  cargo build --bin ghost-node

Run the pallet tests:

rtk cargo test -p pallet-ghost-consensus

For a release build:

rtk cargo build --release --bin ghost-node

Run

The native binary can be used for local inspection:

./target/debug/ghost-node ghost status --detailed
./target/debug/ghost-node ghost mine --threads 1 --difficulty 18446744073709551615

Run the repeatable local E2E smoke test with:

rtk scripts/e2e-local.sh

Testnet Readiness

See docs/testnet-readiness.md for the checklist and runbook that gate testnet launch.

Architecture Snapshot

• node/: client, CLI, RPC, chain spec, and service wiring.
• runtime/: FRAME runtime composition.
• pallets/pallet-ghost-consensus/: Ghost consensus logic, reward rules, slashing, and staking primitives.

Background

Ghost targets 5-second blocks, a 10 GHOST block reward, a 40/60 miner-to-staker split, and a minimum stake of 1 GHOST. Those are the intended economics and protocol goals; the docs in this repository now call out where the current implementation has reached the live path and where it still has work left.