What components are missing from Commonware for building a complete blockchain with wallet/token functionality?

[tx-tomcat]

Hi Commonware team! 👋

I'm exploring using Commonware to build a complete blockchain system with wallet and
token transfer capabilities. After reviewing the existing primitives and the Alto
example, I wanted to get your perspective on what's missing.

Current Understanding

Commonware already provides excellent distributed systems primitives:

• ✅ consensus - Transaction ordering and Byzantine fault tolerance
• ✅ cryptography - Signing, verification, key management
• ✅ p2p - Peer networking and message distribution
• ✅ storage - Data persistence and retrieval
• ✅ runtime - Async execution with deterministic testing
• ✅ broadcast - Message dissemination
• ✅ stream - Transport abstractions

What I Think Is Missing

Based on my analysis, here are the blockchain-specific components that seem to be
missing:

1. Transaction Processing
   - Transaction structure definitions and validation
   - Account-based state machine
   - Gas/fee calculation and execution
2. Blockchain Structure
   - Block headers and body formats
   - Merkle tree implementations for transactions/state
   - Chain validation and fork resolution
3. Transaction Pool (Mempool)
   - Pending transaction management
   - Fee-based prioritization
   - Transaction gossip protocol
4. Account/Address Management
   - Address derivation from public keys
   - Account state (balance, nonce) management
   - Multi-signature address support
5. User-Facing APIs
   - Wallet SDK for transaction creation/signing
   - JSON-RPC API for external applications
   - Block explorer functionality
6. Economic Model
   - Fee markets and pricing mechanisms
   - Token supply management
   - Economic incentive structures

Questions

1. What's your perspective on these gaps? Are there existing Commonware components
   I'm overlooking that could fulfill these roles?
2. Are there any blockchain-specific primitives planned? Or is the expectation that
   developers build these on top of the existing foundation?
3. What would be the recommended architecture for building these missing pieces
   while staying true to Commonware's design principles (trait-based, runtime-agnostic,
   deterministic testing)?
4. Would the team be interested in contributions of these blockchain-specific
   modules? I'm considering implementing them following Commonware's patterns.

I'm planning to implement these missing components as separate crates (e.g.,
commonware-transaction, commonware-state, commonware-mempool, etc.) that integrate
cleanly with the existing primitives. The goal is to enable developers to build
production-ready blockchains using Commonware's proven distributed systems
foundation.

Any guidance or insights from the team would be incredibly valuable! Thanks for
building such a solid foundation. 🙏

[patrick-ogrady]

Thanks for reaching out, @tx-tomcat.

I'll circle back after we release battleware, as it provides much of the missing pieces you are asking about. For the ones it doesn't, it'll be easier to discuss with code to point to.

[tx-tomcat]

I'm waiting for it.If you have any docs or pdf files that help me out, please share some in the meantimes