Blocknote

Blocknote is an open, lightweight protocol for storing data directly on the Algorand blockchain. It lets developers and users publish permanent, decentralized content on-chain using nothing more than Algorand Layer 1 transactions.

• 🖼️ Store files on-chain + update them keeping the versioning
• 📡 Stream continuous data feeds, ideal for IoT devices, sensors and real-time logs
• 🔒 Protect content using password or AES encryption
• 💸 Optimize costs with a smart compression

Blocknote uses a simple, extensible model based on a payload transaction that contains metadata about the content (such as type, compression, and encryption).

Whether you're building an archival tool, a decentralized publishing platform, or a creative inscription project, Blocknote gives you the freedom to write to the chain simply and efficiently.

Install

NodeJS or Bun ?

Bun is a modern alternative to Node.js, known for its superior performance, especially in compute-heavy tasks. Since Blocknote makes extensive use of cryptography and compression, we recommend using Bun for optimal speed and efficiency.
In fact, our current public dapp (blocknote.space) is running Blocknote on Bun.

Blocknote remains fully compatible with both Bun and Node.js.

Install Bun

npm i bun

Or visit https://bun.com/docs/installation for alternated installations.

Install package

Blocknote is available on https://www.npmjs.com/package/blocknote

npm i blocknote

The .env file

Before using Blocknote, make sure to edit your .env file.
There is an .env.skeleton file into the github repo.

PRIVATE_KEY_AES                         = "" # Use by BlocknoteManager to encrypt bootstrap txns
SQLITE_DATABASE_PATH                    = "./db/"# Use by BlocknoteManager to store uploaded files
APP_NAME                                = 'the name of your app'# Use by BlocknoteManager to identity bootstrap txns
ALGOD_TOKEN                             =
ALGOD_PORT                              =
ALGOD_URL                               = "https://testnet-api.algonode.cloud"
INDEXER_TOKEN                           =
INDEXER_PORT                            =
INDEXER_URL                             = "https://testnet-idx.algonode.cloud"

Since Node.js now supports native handling of .env files, Blocknote is not using the dotenv library. To ensure proper functionality, run Node.js with the appropriate argument.

node your-app.js --env-file=.env

or

bun your-app.js --env-file=.env

Full documentation

Read the full documentation to start using Blocknote https://blocknote-js.gitbook.io/