Introduction

BLVM (Bitcoin Low-Level Virtual Machine) implements Bitcoin consensus from the Orange Paper, provides protocol abstraction for multiple Bitcoin variants, a reference full node with P2P networking, a developer SDK, and cryptographic governance for transparent development.

Who is this for?

flowchart TD Q{Your goal?} Q -->|Run a Bitcoin node| OP[Getting Started] Q -->|Build or ship a module| DEV[SDK + Modules] Q -->|Study or change consensus| SPEC[Orange Paper + verification]

Running a Bitcoin node? Operator guide: Installation, Quick Start, First Node Setup (mainnet IBD hub). Read Deployment posture before exposing RPC on mainnet.

Building a module or integrating with the SDK? Developer guide: Building your first module, then Building modules.

Studying the spec or contributing to consensus? The Orange Paper is the normative spec. Formal Verification explains verification. Contributors: Repository layout, Contributing.

What is BLVM?

BLVM is compiler-like infrastructure for Bitcoin implementations. The Orange Paper is the mathematical specification (IR), readable by mathematicians without implementation code. blvm-consensus implements those rules; BLVM Specification Lock (Z3), differential testing, fuzzing, and tests check the code against the spec. See compiler-like architecture, Formal Verification, and the six-layer stack.

Why "LVM"? Like LLVM’s shared compiler infrastructure, BLVM provides shared infrastructure for Bitcoin implementations; the Orange Paper is the reference spec; node and consensus code is validated against it.

Documentation Structure

The sidebar follows three paths from Who is this for:

  • Operators: Getting Started → Node → Security
  • Developers: Getting Started → SDK and modules → Module runtime (under Architecture)
  • Spec and consensus: Architecture → Consensus → Protocol → Reference (Orange Paper)

Cross-cutting: Governance, Development, Appendices.

Documentation is maintained in source repositories alongside code and is aggregated at docs.thebitcoincommons.org. Machine-readable index: docs llms.txt.

Getting Help

Report bugs or request features via GitHub Issues, ask questions in GitHub Discussions, or report security issues to security@thebitcoincommons.org.