Bismuth
Bismuth is a from-scratch blockchain — no ICO, no premine — running on mainnet since 1 May 2017. A decade-long, academically grounded testbed for ideas the rest of the industry named years later.
An account-based chain widely cited as the first blockchain written in Python — not a fork, built from the ground up with an unusually broad plugin ecosystem.
No ICO, no premine — mainnet since 1 May 2017. Everyone started from the same block zero.
Widely cited as the first blockchain written in Python — an original codebase, not a fork.
Signature-derived transaction IDs, with arbitrary operation + openfield data on every tx.
CPU/GPU-friendly proof-of-work with a peer-reviewed difficulty controller.
Tokens, aliases, NFTs, DEX, naming and state channels — as composable building blocks.
Consensus analysed in Modeling, Identification and Control (2017–2018).
Hosted right here on bismuth.cz — no third-party redirects. Verify your download against SHA256SUMS.txt.
The recommended desktop wallet — full GUI, HD accounts, tokens & aliases. Runs on Windows, macOS and Linux.
Source & release notes: TornadoWallet
Generate an offline cold-storage key pair in your browser — air-gapped, nothing sent anywhere.
Run your own node and connect a wallet to it, or use a public wallet server.
A cited retrospective on the project's architectural firsts (2017–2026): semantic data/meaning layering, an early plugin ecosystem and NFTs, on-chain sensor data before “DePIN” had a name, and a peer-reviewed proof-of-work difficulty controller.
A working bibliography of interviews, profiles, reviews and academic papers covering Bismuth (2017–2024) — with cleaned, link-rot-proof local copies of each piece.
One command. The installer pulls every dependency (including the ed25519 / ecdsa signer
libs mainnet needs), registers a systemd service that starts on boot, and the node
auto-bootstraps a recent ledger snapshot on first run — so it starts near the chain tip, not
from genesis. No manual downloads, no pip juggling.
git clone https://github.com/hclivess/Bismuth
cd Bismuth
sudo ./install_node.shThat's it — deps, the bismuth-node service and the ledger bootstrap are handled for
you. Check it with systemctl status bismuth-node.
--tor — also install Tor for private onion routing--regnet — a local regtest node for development--no-start / --restart — control the serviceAdvanced: the fresh-sync bootstrap pulls
ledger.tar.gz automatically; to seed from your own snapshot set
bootstrap_file / bootstrap_url in config.toml. All settings:
doc/11.
The wider Bismuth ecosystem — explorers, pools, infrastructure and community.