Editing Portal:Crypto and Blockchain (section)

=== Blockchain data as a database problem ===

A blockchain can be understood as a distributed append-only database with unusual consensus rules. For Perl, that makes cryptocurrency partly a data-development problem. A Bitcoin node, Ethereum node, block explorer, wallet, or indexer produces large amounts of data that must be decoded, filtered, stored, indexed, and searched.

Perl can help move blockchain data into traditional databases such as SQLite, PostgreSQL, MySQL, or MariaDB. A Perl blockchain-data pipeline might:

* call Bitcoin Core or Ethereum JSON-RPC;
* decode blocks and transactions;
* extract addresses, scripts, inputs, outputs, logs, or events;
* store normalized rows in PostgreSQL or MariaDB;
* build SQLite caches for local tools;
* index addresses or transaction IDs;
* create reports or dashboards;
* alert on matching patterns;
* export CSV or JSON for other tools.

This is a classic Perl workflow. The blockchain is the source system; the relational database is the analysis system; Perl is the glue.