Networks

Bitcore provides support for the main bitcoin network as well as for testnet3, the current test blockchain. We encourage the use of Networks.livenet and Networks.testnet as constants. Note that the library sometimes may check for equality against this object. Please avoid creating a deep copy of this object.

The Network namespace has a function, get(...) that returns an instance of a Network or undefined. The only argument to this function is some kind of identifier of the network: either its name, a reference to a Network object, or a number used as a magic constant to identify the network (for example, the value 0 that gives bitcoin addresses the distinctive '1' at its beginning on livenet, is a 0x6F for testnet).

Regtest

The regtest network is useful for development as it’s possible to programmatically and instantly generate blocks for testing. It’s currently supported as a variation of testnet. Here is an example of how to use regtest with the Bitcore Library:

// Standard testnet
> bitcore.Networks.testnet.networkMagic;
<Buffer 0b 11 09 07>

// Enabling testnet to use the regtest port and magicNumber
> bitcore.Networks.enableRegtest();
> bitcore.Networks.testnet.networkMagic;
<Buffer fa bf b5 da>

Setting the Default Network

Most projects will only need to work with one of the networks. The value of Networks.defaultNetwork can be set to Networks.testnet if the project will need to only to work on testnet (the default is Networks.livenet).

Network constants

The functionality of testnet and livenet is mostly similar (except for some relaxed block validation rules on testnet). They differ in the constants being used for human representation of base58 encoded strings. These are sometimes referred to as “version” constants.

Take a look at this modified snippet from networks.js

var livenet = new Network();
_.extend(livenet, {
  name: 'livenet',
  alias: 'mainnet',
  pubkeyhash: 0x00,
  privatekey: 0x80,
  scripthash: 0x05,
  xpubkey:  0x0488b21e,
  xprivkey: 0x0488ade4,
  port: 8333
});

var testnet = new Network();
_.extend(testnet, {
  name: 'testnet',
  alias: 'testnet',
  pubkeyhash: 0x6f,
  privatekey: 0xef,
  scripthash: 0xc4,
  xpubkey: 0x043587cf,
  xprivkey: 0x04358394,
  port: 18333
});