Project Spotlight

EasyCoin

EasyCoin is a proof-of-concept cryptocurrency system demonstrating the UTXO/coin model of Bitcoin. What it lacks in consensus mechanisms it more than makes up for with an autistic level of detail.

The project includes a Textual CUI for wallet management, coin mining, transaction building, and stamp creation. (Network protocol is experimental and hilariously unoptimized.) The HackNWA CTF GameSet 1 has the following checksum and can be downloaded at the following link:

• e827a8af8cbf39e67f2cff26188c17bab53228a13a900479b8d26d34f25c91ac22a9bd7e
• GameSet1
• Challenge Instructions/Descriptions

After downloading the zip file, move it into the working directory in which EasyCoin is running, then go to the Settings screen and click "Activate GameSet". It will verify the checksum, create a database backup, then unpack the zip and serialized records (txns, coins, inputs, outputs) into the local sqlite database. Then explore coins and try to hijack them. Be sure to read the challenge instructions markdown file. Good luck and happy hunting.

Note for Windows users: you probably need to run `python -m venv venv` and `.\venv\Scripts\activate` before being able to install with pip. Or try uv/uvx instead of pip.

For Linux, use `python -m venv venv` and `source venv/bin/activate` before running pip, or use uv/uvx.