PonyRelay

Relay PonyDirect SMS transaction to the Bitcoin network

Aimed at improving Bitcoins resiliency, PonyRelay is a simple Python application that acts as a bridge between SMS texts and the Bitcoin peer-to-peer network. It watches a folder for incoming Bitcoin transactions, delivered by text messages originating from the PonyDirect mobile app. A Bitcoin transaction is transmitted using multiple text messaages, so this PonyRelay reconstructs and validates the transaction and broadcasts it through a running Bitcoin node.

Development

This is the very first version 0.1-alpha. It works on my machine. Feel free to play with it. Improvement proposals are welcome!

Todo-List:

• cleanup routine (drop out orphaned files and spool entries after some time)
• add support for SMS API gateway, using web hooks
• support for low-cost GSM module on Raspberry Pi
• whitelist, blacklist senders, with option to send confirmation text message
• use Bitcoin Core JSON-RPC directly
• add tests
• make a guide :-)

Requiremens

• bitcoin-cli connected to a Bitcon node needs to be present
• Mobile broadband modem (eg. usb-stick), configured with gammu-smsd to receive text messages

Installation

From Github, tested on Ubuntu 16.04 and Raspbian Stretch

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install git python3 python3-pip
$ git clone https://github.com/Stadicus/ponyrelay
$ cd ponyrelay
$ pip3 install -r requirements.txt
$ chmod +x ponyrelay.py
$ ./ponyrelay.py

Use ./ponyrelay.py --help for information about command line arguments.