cert-deployer

This project deploys smart contracts to the Ethereum blockchain enabling the cert-issuer to modify a certificates' or certificate batches' status respectively.

The related forked repositories of the original cert-issuer and cert-tools are linked below.

https://github.com/bloxberg-org/cert-issuer

https://github.com/bloxberg-org/cert-tools

How deploying smart contract works

After deploying the contract, the cert-deployer links the contract to the potential issuer's ENS domain (?) – more specific sets the contract's address as the ENS entry's address attribute. This input, can, of course, be changed when deploying another contract, but please note that addresses can only be overwritten, since the ENS domain can point to only one (contract) address.

Setting the cert-deployer up

The cert-deployer requires some preparation before it can be used. This preparation includes certain administrative as well as technical steps to be fulfilled being explained a bit more in detail below.

Prerequisites

We highly recommend to use the cert-deployer within a virtual environment! See recommendations. After activating the virtual environment, please execute:

$ python setup.py install

All necessary dependencies will be installed afterwards. Further required are also the setups of an Ethereum wallet (the wallet has to be registered in the Ethereum chain that being intended to be used later).

Our recommended tool for creating and managing the wallet is Metamask.

Configuring cert-deployer

The last step to be executed is completing the configuration inputs (optional: adjusting the smart contract). The conf_template.ini file includes the following parameters:

deploying_address = <Your Ethereum address>

chain = <ethereum_ropsten|ethereum_mainnet|bloxberg>
node_url = <ethereum web3 public node url (e.g. infura)>

ens_name = <Your ENS name registered with your ethereum address>
overwrite_ens_link = <Do you want to overwrite a present link to a smart contract? True/False>

# usb_name is the folder where the private key is and key_file is the file name.
usb_name= <path-to-keyfile-folder>
key_file= <keyfile-file-name>

Notes:

1. The ethereum address corresponds to the respective wallet address.
2. The private key file should be a raw private key: a hex str, bytes or int
3. Potential issuers can set up their own infura nodes or use publicly shared ones.
4. If a smart contract shall be deployed and used by an already to another contract linked ENS name, the overwrite_ens_link has to be set to True in order to prevent accidental overwriting.
5. The cert-deployer uses a separate class to access the wallet's private key which should be stored under the path provided. Ideally, that location is not permanently accessible (e.g. USB stick) improving security.

Rename the conf_template.ini to conf_eth.ini once filled with your parameters. You can find the existing bloxberg config in conf_eth.ini of this repository.

Quick steps

Execute these instructions step-by-step:

1. ensure you have installed solidity compiler (solc)
2. clone github repo $ git clone https://github.com/bloxberg-org/cert-deployer.git
3. Activate virtual environment $ virtualenv <virtual_env_name>/bin/activate
4. install dependencies within virtualenv $ python setup.py install
5. add required information incl. paths and connection data into conf_eth.ini
6. deploy smart contract $ python cert_deployer/deploy.py

... install the forked cert-issuer- (and cert-tools) repositories for benefitting from the whole framework (links above).