Laravel LedgerGuard

Laravel LedgerGuard is a highly secure, production-grade, and tamper-evident financial ledger system for Laravel. Unlike traditional wallet packages that simply increment/decrement a balance column, LedgerGuard utilizes a strict Double-Entry Bookkeeping architecture combined with Blockchain-like cryptographic chaining and Pessimistic Locking to completely eliminate financial fraud, race conditions, and unauthorized database manipulation.

The Threat Model & Architecture

Traditional database structures for wallets are inherently insecure against multi-threaded application exploits or insider threats. LedgerGuard introduces an immutable infrastructure layer to protect financial records:

Key Features

• Polymorphic Flexibility: Attach financial wallets to any Eloquent model (User, Vendor, Company, etc.) seamlessly using Morph relations.
• Immutable Ledger Records: Financial logs are legally immutable; the Eloquent model explicitly blocks update and delete actions at the kernel level.
• Automatic Account Freezing: Instantly locks and freezes a ledger with custom alerts if malicious data integrity degradation is spotted during runtime audits.
• Full Audit Trail: Every single transaction automatically tracks the originator's IP Address and User-Agent out-of-the-box.

Installation

Install the package via Composer:

composer require amreljako/laravel-ledger-guard

Publish and run the secure migrations:

php artisan vendor:publish \
  --provider="Amreljako\LedgerGuard\LedgerGuardServiceProvider" \
  --tag="ledger-guard-migrations"

php artisan migrate

Optionally publish the config file:

php artisan vendor:publish \
  --provider="Amreljako\LedgerGuard\LedgerGuardServiceProvider" \
  --tag="ledger-guard-config"

Configuration

The published configuration file will be located at config/ledger-guard.php:

return [

    /*
    |--------------------------------------------------------------------------
    | Default Currency
    |--------------------------------------------------------------------------
    | The default ISO currency code used when creating a new ledger wallet.
    */
    'default_currency' => 'EGP',

    /*
    |--------------------------------------------------------------------------
    | Auto-Freeze on Tamper
    |--------------------------------------------------------------------------
    | When enabled, the package will instantly freeze the ledger if any
    | cryptographic chain misalignment or direct database manipulation
    | is detected.
    */
    'auto_freeze_on_tamper' => true,

];

Usage & Quick Start

1. Prepare Your Model

Add the HasLedger trait to any Eloquent model you wish to grant a secure financial wallet:

namespace App\Models;

use Illuminate\Foundation\Auth\User as Authenticatable;
use Amreljako\LedgerGuard\Traits\HasLedger;

class User extends Authenticatable
{
    use HasLedger;
}

2. Credit Money (Deposits / Inbound)

To safely deposit funds into a model's ledger:

use Amreljako\LedgerGuard\Facades\LedgerGuard;

// Fetch or create user ledger for a specific currency
$ledger = $user->ledger()->firstOrCreate(['currency' => 'EGP']);

// Safely credit funds with encrypted tracking metadata
LedgerGuard::credit($ledger, 1500.50, [
    'reference_id' => 'TXN_99821',
    'gateway'      => 'Paymob',
    'description'  => 'Wallet Top up via Credit Card',
]);

3. Debit Money (Secure Purchases / Payouts)

To safely deduct funds from a wallet, wrapped automatically inside a database transaction with Pessimistic Locking:

use Amreljako\LedgerGuard\Facades\LedgerGuard;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Log;

try {
    $ledger = $user->ledger()->where('currency', 'EGP')->first();

    LedgerGuard::debit($ledger, 250.00, [
        'order_id' => 'ORD_5541',
        'item'     => 'Cyberpunk Minimalist Hooded Jacket',
    ]);

    echo "Payment successful! Balance securely updated.";

} catch (\Exception $e) {
    // Automatically catches Insufficient Funds, Frozen Accounts,
    // or Tampered Chains
    Log::alert("Transaction blocked: " . $e->getMessage());
}

4. Fetch the Audited Balance

Calculates the real-time balance via double-entry arithmetic while simultaneously auditing the entire cryptographic signature chain:

// Returns a float representing the absolute safe balance
$secureBalance = $user->walletBalance('EGP');

Mathematical Cryptographic Chain

Each record inside the ledger_transactions table computes a rolling cryptographic signature:

$$\text{Current Hash} = \text{SHA256}(\text{ledger_id} \parallel \text{type} \parallel \text{amount} \parallel \text{previous_hash} \parallel \text{APP_KEY})$$

If an attacker gains direct access to your SQL database and attempts to alter a transaction amount, the ledger's mathematical equilibrium breaks. Upon the next balance calculation or transaction request, LedgerGuard:

1. Flags the anomaly
2. Halts execution
3. Freezes the account
4. Throws a Security Violation Exception