RubyCoin aims to be the one library that rules them all crypto-currencies. Currently, only Bitcoin is supported. Adding support for other crypto-currencies is fairly simple and contributions and pull-requests are always welcome.

Installing the gem is trivial. It has extremely few dependencies besides OpenSSL.

    $ gem install rubycoin

Or, if you are using bundler in your project, add the following line to your Gemfile and you're ready to roll.

    gem 'rubycoin'

Using RubyCoin for generating addresses and private keys is extremely simple. Say if you'd want to generate a Bitcoin address, all you need to do is make a new Bitcoin address object like so:

require 'rubycoin'

btc = RubyCoin::Bitcoin::Address.new
btc.address       # 1LGsgrzfmj1683SrK8xJCn3w1Agbesfry8
btc.private_key   # 5JjbQPrzfg3SoyGfLxhtHFff1x3tu9vFw6YDWxvDqWsB2D4RMTo

Work on compressed keys and addresses is currently in progress. Also, it is likely that RubyCoin will support deterministic and hierarchial wallets in the future once the security implications are completely understood.

Currently, the primary goal is to be able to generate addresses for as many as crypto-currencies as possible. The main candidates are:

1. Litecoin
2. Peercoin
3. Dogecoin
4. Mastercoin
5. Namecoin
6. Quark
7. Feathercoin
8. Primecoin
9. Megacoin
10. Infinitecoin
11. Novacoin
12. Worldcoin
13. Darkcoin
14. Vertcoin
15. Maxcoin

Once the address generation mechanism and API is fairly stable for these currencies, signing messages and interacting will respective block-chains over the network may be considered.

Also, complete test coverage will be neat. It is currently absent. However, you can check generated addresses and keys manually by using the tools at Brainwallet.

• Amol Hatwar

The code in this repository is released under the liberal MIT license. A copy can be found in the LICENSE file.

Copyright © 2010-2014 - Amol Hatwar.