Bitcoin is again in the spotlight - for the same, however, reason as always: the exchange rate of this cryptocurrency against paper money has taken a new height. At the peak of trading last week, one bitcoin was worth $2,700, which means that the rate has more than doubled since March alone.
Well, as regular readers know, I personally consider writing only about bitcoin exchange rate fluctuations not only boring, but also counterproductive, because I see the main purpose of BTC not as speculation, but as a new type of payment instrument: it knows no boundaries, does not require intermediaries in classical understanding (banks, states, material carrier). But the highlight of the current situation is precisely that, simultaneously with the last jump in prices, another record was set, much less striking, but also noticed only by understanding people. Let's talk about him today, because his achievement is the expected minimum of the entire Last year- draws a not at all cheerful perspective for those who use bitcoin in any way.
But first, let me outline the situation in May. Prior to that, bitcoin trading on cryptocurrency exchanges was relatively smooth. Yes, the rate danced back and forth, sometimes reaching fluctuations of 25%, but the dynamics of its changes was unhurried, so that it was used by those who needed it for business, not speculation, and the load on the Bitcoin network was normal. The jump to a record high at the end of April and the subsequent rapid upward movement made BTC revisited by the media, popular bloggers and the like. Through them, a new large wave of ordinary people learned about Bitcoin: people who had never encountered cryptocurrencies before, but were attracted by the hype and decided to try it.
average bitcoin exchange rate to the US dollar on popular exchange platforms.
The Bitcoin network is the largest and most stable distributed computer network in the world. This is evidenced by the computing power of the system, which recently exceeded 1 zetaflop (million petaflops), which is eight times the total power of all supercomputers in the world.
Despite such impressive computing performance, Bitcoin was recently delisted from the list of distributed computer projects. Formally, reasons The problem is that the power of the network cannot be adequately estimated after the advent of special bitcoin ASICs that do not perform floating point operations.
However, it is possible to calculate how other supercomputers or network projects are potentially efficient at bitcoin mining (supercomputers, for example, have the ability to perform integer operations used in hashing).
So, the fastest supercomputer to date, the Chinese Tianhe-2, has a performance index of 33.86 petaflops / sec, which is approximately 0.001% of the power of the Bitcoin network.
Network status monitoring
As Bitcoin improves and develops, increasingly competing with various systems retail payments such as Visa and MasterCard, as well as global payment services like Swift, the smooth functioning of a decentralized network becomes the first prerequisite for its viability.
Bitcoin.org's "Official Website of Bitcoin" has done a great job summarizing archives of all danger warnings and network failures.
The final report provides insight into all critical observations of the operation and health of the distributed Bitcoin network, including indicators of availability, scalability, security, and transaction speed over different time intervals.
What other metrics might be useful if we set out to evaluate the health and strength of the Bitcoin network? We have put together the 12 most significant indicators.
The Bitnodes project can help in sizing the underlying bitcoin network, as it discovers all of the network's "full nodes" that are running. The search is carried out by the following method: message getaddr sent recursively to establish a connection with all available nodes in the list, starting with the initial ones. The system does this roll call every 24 hours and displays the results on a world map, along with ratings and bitcoin client version data.
The Bitnodes project was launched in April 2013 with the support of the Bitcoin Foundation as an information sponsor. The latest report on available nodes in the Bitcoin network can be seen here.
Data replication
The exchange of information on the Bitcoin network does not happen instantly. But how fast does bitcoin transaction information spread? The data replication scale created by BitcoinStats shows how quickly a transaction reaches 50 percent of all participants in the peer-to-peer network (i.e. how much time has passed between the transaction or block entered the network and the moment when the majority of the nodes in the network received this update). Now this figure fluctuates around 3.9-6 seconds.
Starter Server Lists
Imagine that you are launching a bitcoin client for the first time. How do you know who to connect with? Lists of known network nodes (start servers) are used by all bitcoin clients to determine the worker nodes in the network with which the client will establish a connection when it starts. Known node lists are maintained and distributed by volunteers using various methods, so that nodes joining the network for the first time have a clear idea of working in this moment in a network of peers.
The lists provide information only about connected and available hosts. The metric of their availability, also p developed by BitcoinStats, reflects the results of attempts to connect to nodes contained in various bootstrap lists. It shows how easy it is for a new node to connect to the network that has never done it before. The closer to 100%, the greater the chance that it will work the first time.
An additional scale shows the speed of the system's response before providing lists of available nodes, measured in milliseconds (the time elapsed from the moment a request was sent to the receipt of a response).
This series of graphs, designed by developer Peter Wuille, depicts "hash complexity" by showing the number of terahashes per second the network generates over various time intervals (1 terahash equals 1,000 gigahashes).
Hash complexity reflects how difficult it is to find new block compared to the original difficulty with which the genesis block was released (the initial difficulty is taken as one). Difficulty is automatically reviewed every 2,016 blocks (approximately every 2 weeks) and right now it is 35 billion times higher than the difficulty Satoshi originally mined with.
This pie chart by Organ Ofcorti evaluates the distribution of hash activity among the largest mining pools at a time interval of a week. This metric is important because the integrity of the network depends on a single source of mining power not constantly controlling more than 50% of the hashing activity.
The table of found hashes reflects all the statistics that can be extracted from the number of blocks found by the user in one week. The authorship of blocks is usually interpreted according to the version of the original source, for example, according to a message on the website of a particular mining pool that announced the find, sometimes according to indirect data, such as Coinbase signatures or known public keys.
Data collected from indirect sources may be unreliable and not take into account individual blocks, the completion of which the miners chose to keep secret, which will undoubtedly affect the statistics of the level of hashing activity.
The Bitcoin protocol is designed to ensure that miners follow the rules laid down in the concept of the program: as soon as a new block is discovered, all participants in the network should be notified about this.
Ego miners do not follow this rule: when they find a block, they keep this fact secret and start looking for a new one... When there are several blocks in the chain, they reveal the cards, revealing blocks that others thought were still wanted .
The less credible the timings that the leaders of the list of miners show before the completion of the blocks, the more likely they are using the “selfish mining” strategy. Currently, the metric says that with a probability of 94% ego-mining does not occur.
Coinometrics explains the principles of its metric:
“The only way to determine the probability of using this strategy is to measure the time intervals between the discovery of new blocks and correlate with the average expected value. The rate at which new blocks are discovered is determined by how fast the miner finds the hash given the complex protocol inputs. Each attempt to determine a hash has a certain degree of probability of a successful resolution. By definition, the degree of probability does not depend on a particular block. As a result, the rate at which new blocks are generated should follow an exponential progression.
Stuck blocks are valid blocks that are not part of the main blockchain. They can appear naturally, for example, if two miners completed the same block at the same time, or result from hacker attack if an attacker with knowledge of hashing tries to reverse transactions.
The blockchain maintains a constantly updated list of transactions that can’t wait to be issued into a new block. The control system displays total number unconfirmed transactions, including the number of bitcoins and the volume of these transactions, measured in kilobytes.
This graph shows the average time in minutes it takes to include a transaction in a block. The timing can vary reasonably depending on the time it takes to validate a transaction, and the degree of risk depends on the value of the transaction in bitcoins.
11. Total blockchain volume
The overall size of the blockchain is important because it is important for the efficient operation of the network that the amount of disk space for storing information does not exceed reasonable limits. And, in addition, the size of the blockchain affects the speed of synchronization after establishment new version bitcoin client. This measurement method helps determine the true dimensions of the blockchain, including headers and transactions, but excluding the index database.
12. Standard block size
The space of Bitcoin is very large, and sometimes a lot of what happens on the network is hidden from our eyes. Luckily for cryptocurrency enthusiasts, there are many monitoring tools that monitor the statistics of the Bitcoin network and display real information. Some members of the cryptocurrency community are even trying to use these statistics to make their own predictions.
In this article, we will discuss several websites that offer statistical information about the Bitcoin network. Many of these online tools are useful for tracking and charting daily protocol changes, as well as giving us insight into the behavior of cryptocurrencies. This includes various blockchain explorers, node counters, and many other interesting analytical tools that help us look at the Bitcoin ecosystem in a new way.
Blockchain Explorers
Blockchain explorers help Bitcoin users to identify all transactions that have taken place on the network since the emergence of the cryptocurrency distributed ledger. At first, there were very few such browsers, but as the Bitcoin network grew, their number increased.
To date, the oldest blockchain explorer. Users can enter a Bitcoin address and view its content, transaction IDs, and get an overview of all transactions on the network. The site contains data on the commissions paid for the transaction, the height of the block in which the transaction is included, the number of confirmations, and much more.
In addition, the site provides great amount statistics and graphs. Users have information about the block, mining, cryptocurrency statistics and various activities on the network. The most demanded information is about the price of Bitcoin and the average block size, as well as the transaction counter and mempool size.
OXT
Another interesting blockchain explorer is a site called OXT (open exploration tool), which is a research tool for analyzing the blockchain. Similar to other blockchain explorers, OXT can display transactions on the Bitcoin network. In addition, the site analyzes various behaviors on the Bitcoin blockchain using graphs and trajectory tools. This includes time charts showing commissions, transactions, scripts and more. In addition, OXT has scatterplots in its arsenal, providing A New Look on the behavior of Bitcoin transactions and addresses.
Other popular browsers include Blockcypher , Insight , Blocktrail and Sochain . Each browser displays blockchain data in a slightly different way, but in general, the transaction information is the same.
Network statistics graphs
statoshi.info
The Statoshi.info website provides real-time statistics of the Bitcoin network. The site dashboards have counters of hosts, usage bandwidth, transaction fee estimates, system performance metrics, memory pool information, and more. The site has been around for several years, with each dashboard displaying various graphs that analyze certain sections of network and protocol behavior.
Another graphic site that has been around for quite some time. The price charts presented on the site are very popular among network users. BitcoinWisdom price charts reflect the value of the cryptocurrency on various exchanges such as Bitstamp, BTCC, Kraken and Bitfinex.
BitcoinWisdom also shows other statistics, such as network difficulty or past and current hashrate.
Another site containing statistics on the Bitcoin network is called . Users are offered a variety of charts that display past and current statistical information about Bitcoin. The site interface contains a counter of mempools, mined blocks, transactions and many other useful network diagrams. Tradeblock also monitors the Ethereum blockchain and has its own browsers.
“Tracking Bitcoin” is also possible using the site. This tool demonstrates the visual interpretation of network transactions, as well as the association of transactions with individual addresses. The site traces the origin of Bitcoin and follows its path through the blockchain using visual diagrams.
Host Information
Node Counter
Node Counter is an analytical website that monitors the nodes of the Bitcoin network. Here are graphic images Bitcoin Core, Classic and Unlimited (BU) nodes. Each table shows different nodes on the network, as well as pools that have reported support for alternative Bitcoin clients and block size proposals. Information on Nodecounter is presented in the form line charts and pie charts.
Founded by startup 21 Inc, the site is also often used to explore various graphs and tables that depict the behavior of the nodes of the Bitcoin network. The site provides a snapshot of the network, as well as a search tool for checking the status of nodes. Bitnodes displays nodes by Bitcoin Core, Classic, and Unlimited (BU) clients.
Coin Dance
Another very useful tool bears the name. It shows users various analyzes and graphs related to nodes in the network. GUI also contains implementations of different nodes with different types of graphs. CoinDance is also popular due to other data presented, such as trading volume on Localbitcoins and Paxful, or even charts reflecting the opinions of well-known companies in the industry regarding the support of Segregated Witness, Emergent Consensus and UASF (BIP 148).
Visualization Gives a New Perspective on the Bitcoin Network
All these monitoring sites offer us a different view of the network, and each of them, depending on the goal, has its own merits. The information provided through these tools can improve our relationship with the network by providing a better understanding of what is happening. In some cases, the graphical display is best method interpretation of network operation and protocol behavior.
Time passes, cryptocurrencies develop, more and more people use them, and because of this, more questions arise.
Recently, the issue of confirming transactions has become especially acute, as sometimes they have to wait too long. We will now tell you how it works and where to check the network load.
Bitcoin mempool, what is it and where can I find it? The blockchain has a special memory, all unconfirmed transactions are added to it. This is called a mempool.
When it is overloaded, the confirmation timeout increases. Miners choose nodes that offer the highest rewards. That's why, the size of the commission affects the speed of processing the operation.
Transactions in the mempool of the Bitcoin blockchain
Detailed explanation - mempool, this is the base of all transactions, pending confirmation.
As soon as a new transaction is made on the network, it takes 10 minutes to confirm it (the time between the creation of new blocks). But depending on the number of transactions, this period can be significantly extended.
Over the past 6 months, problems in the Bitcoin mempool have appeared constantly. This is what affects the speed of transactions.
Any beginner will quickly figure out what a mempool is. All new operations with BTC are first approved by the network, and then enter the mempool, where they await confirmation from the miners.
As soon as the miners include it in the next block, the transfer receives the first confirmation (some transactions require multiple confirmations).
Each node in the blockchain network has its own mempool. Its size is customizable. If the operation is completed, then the data on the unconfirmed transfer is deleted.
As a rule, miners choose first of all those transactions where an increased commission is set. In addition to block rewards, they receive a portion of the commission, so when you set a higher commission, your transactions are processed faster.
Bitcoin mempool size
Network nodes have different amounts of memory for storing unconfirmed transfers. Therefore, each of them has its own algorithm for processing operations.
When the memory is filled almost to the maximum, a minimum commission threshold is set. Then everything is simple, applications with a suitable commission are processed faster, and all other transactions are simply rejected.
The mempool belongs to BIP 35, with the help of "light" wallets conduct transactions. At the same time, the mempool itself is one of the main problems of the entire Bitcoin network.
Users are not always satisfied with how quickly their transfers are processed. And no one wants to wait hours for confirmation or pay an increased commission.
Where to check Bitcoin mempool online?
There are many resources where a graph of the workload of unconfirmed transactions is published. You can see it on the site, setting different time periods - Bitcoin mempool for the last month, year, week, day:
Professionals keep an eye on this indicator, because at times when the load drops, you can set the minimum commission and hope for a quick confirmation of the transaction.
Through the same service, you can only see the total number of unconfirmed Bitcoin transactions:
The first graph shows the occupancy graph in bytes. Considering that each block of the Bitcoin blockchain has 1 MB. information, you can divide the indicators by 1000 and get the value in blocks. For example, at the moment the mempool is loaded with almost 40,000 blocks.
In simple words, a mempool is a set of transactions that have not yet been completed and are awaiting confirmation.. In any pool, there can be an accumulation of operations, which will lead to delays in their execution.
As a rule, the Bitcoin mempool does not contain too much information, but the influx of data can be abrupt.
This creates problems for users. Despite the ability to speed up transfers, no one raises the commission. The speed of transaction processing may decrease for various reasons, and this delays the execution of the transaction for a longer period.
Increasingly, the flow of new transfers exceeds the figure that the miners can handle.
Overloads start from the moment when there is less than 1 MB of memory left in the mempool. If this happens, the confirmation timeout increases by the number of blocks mined.
For example, if the pool size is 20 MB, then transactions with a small commission will receive confirmation only after every 20th block.
Those who need to quickly make a transaction will have to pay an increased commission, there is no other way. Bitcoin developers have already tried to increase the amount of megabytes in each block, this led to the emergence of BitcoinCash (there are blocks of 8 MB.).
In the meantime, the problem of mempool workload remains relevant, and transactions with a large commission will definitely be a priority.
Ethereum Mempul
There is nothing to tell about this, because the principles here are exactly the same. Now there is no serious workload for this cryptocurrency, transactions are fast, even if you set the minimum commission.
If you are interested in seeing the Ethereum mempool, go to . The maximum value on the chart was 20,000 unconfirmed transactions, but the situation quickly changed.
The constant expansion of the Bitcoin network and the increase in the audience of users leads to serious blockchain loads. It is getting harder and harder to wait for transactions when a large commission is not being charged.
Try to look at the bitcoin mempool before performing the operation, it is advisable to choose the moments when it is less loaded, otherwise, without a large commission, you will have to wait a long time for the transfer to be processed.
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The complexity of the bitcoin network is the main indicator that determines ease» finding a block. The network is configured in such a way that blocks are found approximately once every 10 minutes, and since computing power grows almost steadily, there must be a parameter that compensates for this growth. This parameter is complexity, which is recalculated every 2016 blocks (about once every two weeks).
Almost all the time of the existence of the network, the complexity grew. Sometimes strong, sometimes not. And recently for the first time for a long time network difficulty has decreased, this was primarily caused by the shutdown of one of the largest mining pools GHash.io. It is difficult to predict how the network will continue to behave, but many other mining pools continued to work.
And some technical information: complexity (difficulty) is the relative complexity of generating the required block signature. Difficulty = 1 corresponds to an achievable goal in which the first thirty-two bits are zeros. Accordingly, to generate a block signature, you need an average of (2 32 * complexity) attempts (SHA-256 HASH). The difficulty is recalculated by all bitcoin clients about once every 2 weeks, so that the block generation rate is about 6 blocks per hour. The current complexity of the bitcoin network is 49 the first bits of the hash must be zeros and then the 23 bits of the hash must be less than 6A93B3