Overview

This is a PRISM Node implementation in Rust according to the PRISM DID Method.

PRISM DID Introduction

If you are already familiar with DID and PRISM DID method, skip this part.

A Decentralized Identifier (DID) is a type of URI used as a stable identifier for a resource known as a DID Document. A DID Document contains a collection of public keys and optionally some other resources that applications can use. Various types of DID implementations, called DID Methods, exist. PRISM DID is one such method, where operations that modify the DID Document are published to the Cardano blockchain.

Published PRISM DID operations are encoded in protobuf format and must adhere to the rules outlined in the PRISM DID specification. The protobuf-encoded operations are embedded in Cardano transaction metadata and publicly available for all parties to validate.

The PRISM Node's role is to follow the Cardano blockchain, read, parse, and validate published PRISM DID operations. It functions as an indexer, allowing applications to query DIDs and retrieve the corresponding DID Documents. This process, known as DID resolution, returns the DID Document in the W3C-compliant format, so applications don't need to know about the details of each DID Method.

It is recommended to check out this protocol high level description.

Quickstart

Public demo instance

A public instance of neoprism is hosted at https://neoprism.patlo.dev.
A public preprod instance is also available at https://neoprism-preprod.patlo.dev.

Self-hosting

Start the node and sync block metadata from relay node backbone.mainnet.cardanofoundation.org:3001

cd docker
docker-compose up --build

WebUI is available at http://localhost:8080

Resolver endpoint is availabe at http://localhost:8080/api/dids/<did>

Development guide

This project uses Nix for the local development environment and artifact packaging. Follow the instructions here to install Nix—it's all you need!

Entering the development shell

If you already have cargo and other required dependencies (e.g. protoc) installed, you can use your own environment. Feel free to check nix shell to see the required dependencies and port it to your own environment.

A recommended approach is to use nix develop command to enter the development shell. This way, the development shell is consistent and the same version of the libraries are used to build and test.

nix develop

# you can now run command like "cargo version"

Note that you may need to enable experiment flake command. Please follow the intructions here.

Additionally, you can use --unset <ENV> to disable host environment variable to make development shell more pure. For example:

nix develop --unset PATH

to disable all binaries available on host PATH.

Development quickstart

Spinning up services in dev shell

nix develop --unset PATH
npm install
dbUp
runNode

Cleaning up services in dev shell

dbDown

Frequently used commands

These are commands you can run outside the development shell

command	description
nix flake check	Run checks to see if it will pass the CI (CI runs this check)
nix build .#indexer-docker	Use nix to build the docker image (output available at ./result)
nix build .#indexer-docker && cat ./result | docker load	Use nix to build the docker image and load it using docker

Assuming you are in the development shell, these are frequently used commands.

command	description
npm install	Install the npm dependencies (first time only)
cargo build	Build the cargo workspace
cargo clean	Clean the cargo workspace
cargo r -p indexer-node -- -h	See indexer-node service CLI options
cargo test --all-features	Run tests which enable all crate features

And these are some scripts provided by the shell to automate local dev workflow

command	description
format	Run formatter on everything
build	Building the whole project
buildAssets	Building the WebUI assets (css, javascript, static assets)
dbUp	Spin up the local database
dbDown	Tear down the local database
pgDump	Dump the local database to postgres.dump file
pgRestore	Restore the local database from postgres.dump file
runNode	Run the indexer-node connecting to the local database
runNode --cardano <ADDR>	Run the indexer-node connecting to the cardano relay at ADDR