Rust Dash

Library with support for de/serialization, parsing and executing on data-structures and network messages related to Dash Core payment chain. Core RPC client.

For contributors: see CONTRIBUTING.md and AGENTS.md for branch policy and commands.

Documentation

Supports (or should support)

• De/serialization of Dash protocol network messages
• De/serialization of blocks and transactions
• Script de/serialization
• Private keys and address creation, de/serialization and validation (including full BIP32 support)
• PSBT creation, manipulation, merging and finalization
• Pay-to-contract support as in Appendix A of the Blockstream sidechains whitepaper
• JSONRPC interaction with Dash Core
• FFI bindings for C/Swift integration (dash-spv-ffi, key-wallet-ffi)
• Unified SDK option for iOS that combines Core and Platform functionality
• High-level wallet management with transaction building and UTXO management

Known limitations

Consensus

This library must not be used for consensus code (i.e. fully validating blockchain data). It technically supports doing this, but doing so is very ill-advised because there are many deviations, known and unknown, between this library and the Dash Core reference implementation. In a consensus based cryptocurrency such as Dash it is critical that all parties are using the same rules to validate data, and this library does not and might never implement the same rules as Core.

Given the complexity of both C++ and Rust, it is unlikely that this will ever be fixed, and there are no plans to do so. Of course, patches to fix specific consensus incompatibilities are welcome.

Support for 16-bit pointer sizes

16-bit pointer sizes are not supported and we can't promise they will be. It will be dependent on rust-bitcoin implementing them first.

Usage

Given below is an example of how to connect to the Dash Core JSON-RPC for a Dash Core node running on localhost and print out the hash of the latest block.

It assumes that the node has password authentication setup, the RPC interface is enabled at port 8332 and the node is set up to accept RPC connections.

extern crate dashcore_rpc;

use dashcore_rpc::{Auth, Client, RpcApi};

fn main() {

    let rpc = Client::new(
        "localhost:19998",
                          Auth::UserPass("<FILL RPC USERNAME>".to_string(),
                                         "<FILL RPC PASSWORD>".to_string())).unwrap();
    let best_block_hash = rpc.get_best_block_hash().unwrap();
    println!("best block hash: {}", best_block_hash);
}

See client/examples/ for more usage examples.

Wallet Management

This library provides comprehensive wallet functionality through multiple components:

• key-wallet: Low-level cryptographic primitives for HD wallets, mnemonic generation, and key derivation
• key-wallet-manager: High-level wallet management with transaction building, UTXO tracking, and coin selection
• key-wallet-ffi: C/Swift FFI bindings for mobile integration
• dash-spv: SPV (Simplified Payment Verification) client implementation

For most applications, start with key-wallet-manager which provides a complete, easy-to-use interface for wallet operations.

Supported Dash Core Versions

The following versions are officially supported and automatically tested:

• 0.18.0
• 0.18.1
• 0.19.0.1
• 0.19.1
• 0.20.0
• 0.20.1
• 0.21.0

Minimum Supported Rust Version (MSRV)

This workspace compiles on Rust 1.89 or newer. Crates use mixed editions (2021 and 2024). See CLAUDE.md/AGENTS.md for common commands and CI expectations.

Documentation

Documentation can be found on dashcore.readme.io/docs.

Component Documentation

• key-wallet-manager - High-level wallet management guide
• Unified SDK - iOS SDK combining Core and Platform functionality

Contributing

Contributions are generally welcome. If you intend to make larger changes please discuss them in an issue before PRing them to avoid duplicate work and architectural mismatches.

Branching Model

Feature work targets the active v**-dev branch. Submit hotfixes and documentation-only changes to master unless maintainers direct otherwise.

Installing Rust

Rust can be installed using your package manager of choice or rustup.rs. The former way is considered more secure since it typically doesn't involve trust in the CA system. But be aware that the version of Rust shipped by your distribution might be out of date. See the MSRV section for the minimum supported version.

Building

The library can be built and tested using cargo:

git clone [email protected]:dashpay/rust-dashcore.git
cd rust-dashcore
cargo build

You can run tests with:

cargo test

Please refer to the cargo documentation for more detailed instructions.

Pull Requests

Every PR needs at least two reviews to get merged. During the review phase maintainers and contributors are likely to leave comments and request changes. Please try to address them, otherwise your PR might get closed without merging after a longer time of inactivity. If your PR isn't ready for review yet please mark it by prefixing the title with WIP: .

CI Pipeline

The CI pipeline requires approval before being run on each MR.

In order to speed up the review process the CI pipeline can be run locally using act. The fuzz and Cross jobs will be skipped when using act due to caching being unsupported at this time. We do not actively support act but will merge PRs fixing act issues.

Release Notes

See CHANGELOG.md.

Licensing

The code in this project is licensed under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal license.