Rinkeby: Network Dashboard

Starting with the 1.5 release of go-ethereum, we’ve transitioned away from shipping only full blown Ethereum clients and started focusing on releasing the code as reusable packages initially for Go projects, then later for Java based Android projects too. Mobile support is still evolving, hence is bound to change often and hard, but the Ethereum network can nonetheless be accessed from Android too.

Under the hood the Android library is backed by a go-ethereum light node, meaning that given a not-too-old Android device, you should be able to join the network without significant issues. Certain functionality is not yet available and rough edges are bound to appear here and there, please report issues if you find any.

The stable Android archives are distributed via Maven Central, and the develop snapshots via the Sonatype repositories. Before proceeding, please ensure you have a recent version configured in your Android project. You can find details in Mobile: Introduction – Android archive.

Before connecting to the Ethereum network, download the rinkeby.json genesis json file and either store it in your Android project as a resource file you can access, or save it as a string in a variable. You’re going to need to initialize your client.

Inside your Java code you can now import the geth archive and connect to Ethereum:

import org.ethereum.geth.*;

Enodes bootnodes = new Enodes();
bootnodes.append(new Enode("enode://a24ac7c5484ef4ed0c5eb2d36620ba4e4aa13b8c84684e1b4aab0cebea2ae45cb[email protected]52.169.42.101:30303"));

NodeConfig config = new NodeConfig();
config.setBootstrapNodes(bootnodes);
config.setEthereumNetworkID(4);
config.setEthereumGenesis(genesis);
config.setEthereumNetStats("yournode:Respect my [email protected]");

Node node = new Node(getFilesDir() + "/.rinkeby", config);
node.start();