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 contains a huge amount of statistical data 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 different kinds behavior in the Bitcoin blockchain using graphs and trajectory display 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 the 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.
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 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
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, in this moment mempool 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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In the past few days, the Bitcoin network has different parties several misfortunes fell at the same time. Separately, similar events have happened before, but now all the factors have come together at once. It seems that some mysterious but powerful force is subjecting Bitcoin to severe and sophisticated tests in order to check whether it is suitable for the role of the world market. payment system?
Even if there is no invisible hand, such a stress test will be useful for Bitcoin developers and for the entire community. After all, it is precisely such situations that show a real margin of safety and reveal shortcomings. Let's see how events unfolded.
1. Back at the end of June, due to "bank holidays" and even for the Greeks, activity in the Bitcoin network increased. Many people have become interested in cryptocurrencies as a means of preserving their savings independent of state control during a time of financial instability. On their own, these events are rather beneficial for Bitcoin, but have now created an additional burden.
2. Discussions about the insufficient block size limit of 1 MB have been going on for a long time, with varying success and even conflicts, but two weeks ago, there was finally an increase in the limit to 8 MB at the beginning of 2016.
3. On June 23, the Coinwallet.eu exchange to everyone that changing the block size is really necessary. She succeeded, but the extremely practical method of proof caused quite a stir in the community. Moreover, the company warned that it would conduct the second stage of "testing".
4. On July 4, there was a critical major mining pool caused by the transition to mandatory compliance with BIP66 - changing the Bitcoin protocol to version 3 (v3) blocks. As a result, the network for some time split into two actually equal branches and there was a separation and loss (for miners) of two chains of 6 and 3 blocks, respectively. To date, almost all pools have switched to blocks of the third version, except for the two largest ones - F2Pool (formerly Discus Fish) and Antpool. Therefore, the “alarming” status on the network has not yet been canceled and blockchain bifurcations are still possible.
5. But the most interesting thing began on the evening of July 7 - someone launched an attack on the network with "transaction spam" - that is, by generating huge amount small transactions that completely filled up all new blocks. At the moment, it is not known who and for what purpose carries out this attack. Despite the public availability of the blockchain, the anonymity of Bitcoin makes it difficult to pinpoint the origin of these transactions. Now, about 400 connected addresses have been discovered that continuously transfer 1000 satoshis (0.00001 BTC) to each other, while paying a commission, therefore, the attack is costly for its initiator. Here is one of these addresses, and following the chain, you can find the rest.
What's happening?
Let's try to describe the current situation. Yesterday, the queue of unconfirmed transactions began to grow rapidly. Previously, it rarely exceeded 10,000, but now, according to Blockchain.info, it constantly stays above 20,000:
The total size of all unconfirmed transactions is almost 22 megabytes, which means that it takes an average of 22 full blocks to send them, but transactions keep coming in all the time. Therefore, the queue size almost does not change. The situation is aggravated by the fact that quite a lot of "empty" blocks appear in the network, containing only 1-2 transactions. Each block includes at least one transaction - in it, the miners receive the mined coins. Whether this happens for technical reasons or from the desire of pool owners to get a block faster is unknown. Each empty block pushes the queue back another 10 minutes.
The consequences of the attack are clearly visible on some charts on Blockchain.info:
You can see that both the number of transactions per block and the average block size have skyrocketed in the last two days, already dangerously approaching the maximum value of 1MB. Thus, this second stress test once again convincingly proves the need to increase the limit.
In addition to major problems, there were also smaller ones. In particular, at about 21:00 Moscow time, one of the main information resources about Bitcoin - Blockchain.info.
This happened due to two blocks that the block explorer could not read - and from F2Pool, which, nevertheless, went into the main blockchain. The service is now working, but still does not show transactions from these two blocks.
What will happen next?
The attack will obviously end soon. If the attacker is not Satoshi Nakamoto himself with his million bitcoins, the resources to continue the attack will soon be depleted, since when a queue arises, network clients automatically increase the amount of commission required for fast passage. Therefore, for an effective attack, the attacker also has to increase payments to miners.
When the attack will end, we cannot say now. But let's hope that the mysterious "tester" will declare himself and explain the motives of his actions. Perhaps this will speed up the release of a patch that increases maximum size block - the problem is now obvious to everyone.
As for the incompatibility of block versions and the possible splitting of the chain, it is not so acute, but it may turn out to be more serious. Most of the pools have updated their wallets after a warning from the developers, but the two largest Chinese pools, together having up to 40% of the total capacity, have not yet been updated and it is not known when they will do so. This behavior can cause not only technical problems, which the network is relatively easy to deal with, but will also deal a blow to the reputation of Bitcoin. Obviously, the network self-regulation mechanisms are not very effective against large miners. You can only ignore them - by reducing security or increasing the number of confirmations.
Despite all the difficulties described above and the slowdown in the passage of many transactions, the Bitcoin network continues to work, and this is the main thing. Cryptocurrency has shown that it can withstand quite serious attacks, although many technical aspects need serious improvement.
However, it is not only free decentralized systems that suffer from technical flaws. Ironically, today, due to a technical failure, one of the largest trading floors World - New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). According to media reports, the cause was an unsuccessful update of some systems. No one in the world is immune from such troubles.