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2.1: Installing the FROST Tools

The ZF FROST Tools allow you to create FROST secret shares and to sign with FROST. This chapter provides hands-on tutorials for using them. By following these tutorials, you can solidfy your understanding of how FROST works.

As demonstrated here, these tools allow the simple signing of documents, but you won't be able to Bitcoin transactions yet. That will require additional support, as detailed in Chapter 4.

Installing Rust

The ZF Frost Tools were built with Rust using Cargo. If you've already installed Rust and Cargo on your system, you can continue on to "Installing ZF FROST Tools". Otherwise, you'll need to install Rust and Cargo first.

:book: What is a Rust? Rust is a programming language focused on performance and memory safety. Its speed and efficiency and tight control over memory management have made it a favorite among developers.

:book: What is Cargo? Cargo is Rust's package management system. It makes it simple to accurately install Rust projects ... such as the FROST Tools. (Cargo is another reason for Rust's popularity.)

Installing with Rustup

The preferred method of installing Rust and Cargo is rustup.

Installing with Rustup on Linux & MacOS

On MacOS, Linux, and other UNIX OSes, you can run the following to install rustup:

% curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

You should choose to "Proceed with standard installation". Afterward, you will need to restart your command-line shell before cargo will be visible.

Installing with Rustup on Windows

A rustup-init.exe installer is available if you run WIndows.

Installing with Package Managers

You can alternatively install Rust and Cargo with a standard package manager. You might prefer this if you use a single package manager to control most of your third-party installations. Rust is supported on Chocolatey, Homebrew, MacPorts, pkgsrc, and Scoop.

Testing Your Install

When your install is complete, you should see cargo in your standard path.

This is an example of a rustup install:

% which cargo
/Users/shannona/.cargo/bin/cargo

This is an example of a Homebrew install:

% which cargo
/opt/homebrew/bin/cargo

Installing ZF FROST Tools

The ZF FROST Tools should be installed with git. If you do not have git installed, visit the Git Downloads site.

Once you have git, choose a directory where you want to install frost-tools and then clone the repository:

% git clone https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/frost-tools.git
Cloning into 'frost-tools'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 3295, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (54/54), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (51/51), done.
remote: Total 3295 (delta 25), reused 3 (delta 3), pack-reused 3241 (from 2)
Receiving objects: 100% (3295/3295), 1.08 MiB | 1.37 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (1987/1987), done.

This should create a frost-tools directory:

% ls frost-tools 
Cargo.lock      frost-client        README.md
Cargo.toml      frostd          rust-toolchain.toml
codecov.yml     LICENSE-APACHE      supply-chain
CONTRIBUTING.md     LICENSE-MIT     tests
DEVELOPER.md        Makefile.toml       zcash-sign

You can then change into the crate root and run cargo install. You'll initially be installing the frost-client package.

% cd frost-tools
% cargo install --path frost-client

You should see the client-side ZF FROST Tools installed:

Installed package `frost-client v0.1.0 (/Users/ShannonA/Documents/GitHub/FROST/frost-tools/frost-client)` (executables `coordinator`, `dkg`, `frost-client`, `participant`, `trusted-dealer`)

You're now ready to use the ZF FROST Tools!

Summary: Installing the FROST Tools

All you need to do to start using the ZF FROST Tools is to clone the frost-tools repo and build it with Rust. If you've never used Git or Rust before, you will need to download that software first.

What's Next

Continue onward with "Signing with FROST" by ยง2.2: Creating FROST Secret Shares with TDG.