Infrastructure

Overview

Components

• Peer/Node -- Maintains connections with the BitCoin network, and relays BitCoin traffic based on policies.
• Wallet -- Maintains private key database, and controls balances for the user.
• UI -- End-user interface. Could be a wx/Qt/GTK GUI, CLI, Android app, iPhone app, etc...
• Miner -- Tries to solve blocks for the wallet.

Protocols

• p2p -- Used for communication between Peers/Nodes, and also between your personal Peer/Node and your Wallet(s)
• wallet -- Used for communication between your Wallet(s) and your Miner(s) and User Interface(s)

Diagram

 ___________
|           |--(p2p protocol)---ooooooooooooooo
| Peer/Node |--(p2p protocol)--o  Other Peers  o
|___________|--(p2p protocol)---ooooooooooooooo
      |
(p2p protocol)
 _____|_____                       _________
|           |                     |         |
|   Wallet  |--(wallet protocol)--|  Miner  |
|___________|                     |_________|
      |
(wallet protocol)
 _____|__________
|                |
| User Interface |
|________________|

Implementations

Peer/Node

Software
bitcoind
wxBitcoin

Wallet

Software	Old JSON-RPC	New Wallet protocol
bitcoind	Yes	No
wxBitcoin	Yes	No

Miner

Software	Old JSON-RPC	New Wallet protocol
Cpu_Miner	Yes	No
DiabloMiner	Yes	No
Poclbm	Yes	No

User Interface

Software	Old JSON-RPC	New Wallet protocol
Bitcoin-js-remote	??	No
BitDroid	??	No
Java Bitcoin Client	??	No
Spesmilo	Yes	No
wxBitcoin	No	No