Module blockchain

Expand description

§Bitcoin Blockchain

This module provides the structures and functions to maintain the blockchain.

BlockIter: An iterator over blocks in blockheight order
Blockchain: The blockchain
BlockchainNode: A link in the blockchain
RevBlockIter: An iterator over blocks in reverse blockheight order. Note that this is essentially the same as if we’d implemented DoubleEndedIterator on BlockIter — but we can’t do that since if BlockIter is started off the main chain, it will not reach the best tip, so the iterator and its .rev() would be iterators over different chains! To avoid this suprising behaviour we simply use separate iterators.
RevStaleBlockIter: An iterator over blocks in reverse blockheight order, which yielding only stale blocks (ending at the point where it would’ve returned a block on the main chain). It does this by checking if the next pointer of the next-to-by-yielded block matches the currently-yielded block. If not, scan forward from next-to-be-yielded block. If we hit the best tip, set the next-to-by-yielded block to None instead.