This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by 이관호(Gwanho LEE)
Building a Bitcoin CLI Wallet in Rust
🚀 Overview
This project is a Rust-based Bitcoin CLI wallet, built from the ground up to showcase real-world system programming, blockchain protocol mastery, and security-conscious software engineering. It serves both as a personal learning milestone and a portfolio-quality demonstration of professional development skills.
🔧 Architecture at a Glance
This wallet mirrors the internal structure of modern cryptocurrency clients, providing robust cryptographic handling, efficient network communication, and cross-platform data persistence.
🔐 Cryptography & Key Management
• BIP39/BIP44 HD Wallets for deterministic key generation
• secp256k1 curve for signing transactions (ECDSA)
• WIF (Wallet Import Format) support for key portability
• Mnemonic-based recovery system with HMAC-SHA256-derived seed
🧱 Blockchain Features
• UTXO Tracking: Query and track spendable outputs
• Transaction Creation: Construct valid Bitcoin transactions from UTXOs
• Blockstream API Integration (Testnet): Real-time blockchain data
• Gap Limit Handling: Ensures proper address discovery
💾 Storage & Persistence
• JSON File Storage for cross-platform wallet state
• Atomic I/O operations to prevent data loss
• Full Backup/Recovery support via mnemonic phrase
💡 Core Features
• ✅ BIP44-compliant HD address generation
• ✅ Intelligent UTXO selection
• ✅ Transaction signing and broadcasting
• ✅ Real-time wallet balance & transaction sync
• ✅ Cross-platform support: Linux, macOS, Windows
🛡️ Security Highlights
• Rust guarantees memory safety and avoids common C/C++ vulnerabilities
• Private key isolation and zero-copy signing
• TLS-encrypted API communication
• Multi-stage transaction validation
🧰 Tech Stack
• Rust 1.70+ (async/await enabled)
• bitcoin, bitcoin_hashes, secp256k1 crates
• serde + serde_json for state handling
• reqwest for HTTP requests
• tokio async runtime
• cargo test suite for unit/integration testing
⚙️ Performance
• 🧠 Memory: <10MB for 1000+ wallet addresses
• ⚡ Transaction Signing: <100ms
• 🌐 Sync Time: <2s per request to Blockstream API
• 🚀 Startup Time: <500ms
🧠 What I Learned
This project strengthened both foundational and advanced skills in:
🧵 Systems Programming (Rust)
• Ownership, borrowing, lifetimes
• Concurrency with async/.await
• Custom error types and Result handling
• Low-level data manipulation and optimization
📡 Blockchain Internals
• Bitcoin transaction formats and script validation
• ECDSA cryptography, hashing algorithms (SHA256, RIPEMD160)
• UTXO models, fee estimation, input/output control
• Wallet design principles and address gap management
🛠️ Software Engineering
• Modular architecture with clear separation of concerns
• Full documentation with doc comments & examples
• TDD approach with edge case coverage
• CI-ready coding practices
🔗 GitHub Repository
View the complete project and code:
https://github.com/leepl37/rust_cli_wallet
⸻
🌱 What Comes Next
I plan to evolve this project into a full-featured production wallet:
🔒 Security Enhancements
• HSM (Ledger/Trezor) support
• AES-GCM encryption for local files
• Multi-sig transaction support
🌐 Extended Functionality
• REST API and GraphQL integration
• Lightning Network support
🧪 Developer Experience
• Interactive REPL CLI with autocomplete
• Property-based testing (e.g. QuickCheck)
• Docker-based deployment pipeline
📈 Performance & DevOps
• Redis caching for UTXO data
• PostgreSQL-based transaction ledger
• Prometheus metrics & Grafana dashboards
Let’s build the decentralized future — safely, securely, and in Rust.
🔗 Explore the code on GitHub: https://github.com/leepl37/rust_cli_wallet
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by 이관호(Gwanho LEE)
이관호(Gwanho LEE) | Sciencx (2025-07-14T09:18:06+00:00) 🦉Building a Bitcoin CLI Wallet in Rust. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2025/07/14/%f0%9f%a6%89building-a-bitcoin-cli-wallet-in-rust/
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