NBitcoin

NBitcoin is the most complete Bitcoin library for the .NET platform. It implements all most relevant Bitcoin Improvement Proposals (BIPs). It also provides low level access to Bitcoin primitives so you can easily build your application on top of it.

It works on Windows, Mac and Linux with Xamarin, Unity, .NET Core or CLR.

You can browse the API easily through the API reference.

You can use it in .NET Core:

dotnet add package NBitcoin

If using legacy .NET Framework in Visual Studio

Install-Package NBitcoin

You can also just use the Manage NuGet Package window on your project in Visual Studio.

The packages support with full features: Windows Desktop applications, Mono Desktop applications and platforms supported by .NET Standard 1.3 (.NET Core, Xamarin IOS, Xamarin Android, UWP and more) also with limited features: platforms supported by .NET Standard 1.1 (Windows Phone, Windows 8.0 apps).

Get started:

First, you need to understand Bitcoin, for this read:

• Programming The Blockchain in C#.

Once you get familiar with Bitcoin terminology with this book, follow up by reading:

• NBitcoin documentation.

This will teach you how to use NBitcoin in a practical way.

Altcoins:

Install-Package NBitcoin.Altcoins

Find more information here.

Use with my own blockchain:

Find more information here.

Use in Unity:

You should use at least Unity 2018.2 using Script Runtime Version .NET 4.x Equivalent and Api Compatibility Level .NET Standard 2.0. You can see more on this post.

Then you need to compile NBitcoin:

git clone https://github.com/MetacoSA/NBitcoin/

cd NBitcoin/NBitcoin

dotnet publish -c Release -f netstandard2.0

Remove-Item -Force -Recurse .\bin\Release\netstandard2.0\publish\runtimes\

Then put the libraries of .\bin\Release\netstandard2.0 into your asset folder.

If you need altcoins support, use the same step but with cd NBitcoin/NBitcoin.Altcoins instead.

Use in .NET Core:

If you want to use .NET Core, first install .NET Core as documented here.

Then:

mkdir MyProject

cd MyProject

dotnet new console

dotnet add package NBitcoin

dotnet restore

Then edit your Program.cs:

using System;

using NBitcoin;

namespace _125350929

{

    class Program

    {

        static void Main(string[] args)

        {

            Console.WriteLine("Hello World! " + new Key().GetWif(Network.Main));

        }

    }

}

You can then run with

dotnet run

Description

NBitcoin notably includes:

• A TransactionBuilder supporting Stealth, Open Asset, and all standard transactions
• Full script evaluation and parsing
• A RPC Client
• A Rest Client
• The parsing of standard scripts and creation of custom ones
• The serialization of blocks, transactions and scripts
• The signing and verification with private keys (with support for compact signatures) for proving ownership
• Bloom filters and partial merkle trees
• Segregated Witness (BIP 141, BIP 143, BIP 144)
• Bech32 segwit address implementation with error detection BIP 173
• Mnemonic code for generating deterministic keys (BIP 39), credits to Thasshiznets
• Hierarchical Deterministic Wallets (BIP 32)
• Payment URLs (BIP 21)
• Full Bitcoin P2P implementation with SOCKS5 support for connecting through Tor.

NBitcoin is inspired by Bitcoin Core code but provides a simpler object oriented API (e.g., new Key().PubKey.Address.ToString() to generate a key and get the associated address). It relies on the BouncyCastle cryptography library instead of OpenSSL, yet replicates OpenSSL bugs to guarantee compatibility. NBitcoin also ports the integrality of Bitcoin Core unit tests with their original data in order to validate the compatibility of the two implementations.