Good Day InternEeeet! Nerding out a bit here, but its not big thang you guys! Anyway, I knew of these tools (statoshi and tradeblock) for a while, but like the BeesBros, I sat on them for a while before giving them a full shot. So now, if you’ve never heard of them (or welcome, if this is your first time here even!) and you’re feeling analysis paralysis from the information overload…its okay! We all face that when seeing something new. Nothing irritates me more than finding something amazing, cool, and interesting, but then getting slapped in the face with a difficulty curve to overcome before I can begin to breath, let alone crawl to walk. (I’m talking about you Android SDK from Jetbrains), If you’re into tuning in, I’m listening to this here.
Tradeblock
I’ve known about them since they dubbed themselves as Genesis Block and offered a comprehensive mining calculators for the would-be small and big time miners alike to ROI. I used to roll by there maybe 3 times a day speculating the value of a BFL 60 vs a KNC Mercury using there predictions to determine with some level of certainty – an investment decision. At the there wasn’t a pie-in-the-sky feeling that you got using Genesis block vs say, Bitcoinx.com (which was a sham calculator I have now discovered!). Well, I’ve been on topic long enough, lets break down how to use this site:
Choose Mining OR Choose Network OR Choose BlockChain
For today, we’ll be using BlockChain:
From the information above, we can debunk when someone says “There’s transaction spam on the network” Based on the transaction values we see that the distribution of transactions (in the lower left corner blue bars) have a normal distribution with average transactions being a Bitcoin or less but not lower than .1BTC The above graph is the Blocks recently solved with the time to solve shown by how far apart they are graphed. The size of each block changes to match its real life size in KB – Bitcoin blocks presently have a 1MB cap limit on the size so miners will submit blocks that size or smaller. Now two months ago, Luke-Jr put out some research that analyzed the Bitcoin blockchain and that show blocks averaging between 3-600 KB in size. Its very strange that after the blocksize debate the blocks are now all of the sudden nearly or close to near the max block size for no reason. That blue circle near the center is a 0 transaction block.
We see the Mempool to the right where the existing transactions and their value sit. This part was confusing to me at first, but see how there’s sakes of yellow on the bars? The lighter shade of yellow and blue is the newly created transactions on Bitcoin since the last block was found. With that info in hand, its now clear to see that I huge chunk of BTC and transactions sits – that Bitcoin is not blocking the other transactions, but it’s somehow too large to be included into a block so it sits in the Mempool for ‘eternity’?
Funny how quickly this information changed with a few blocks being solved, now it appears to be blockchain spam occurring. Though we can still see, that transactions are still being added and confirmed into the Bitcoin Blockchain. I’m still trying to determine what happens to the old mempool. Mempool.info, while neat, was useless for me because it says all transactions are over a month old and that doesn’t seem to make sense, we can see here that there are live transactions being added on Tradeblock!
Statoshi
Statoshi is admittedly its own beast. What was initially a github repo for anyone to install onto their own existing full node, Statoshi.info is a hosted version of the application for anyone to view the average statistics that could be gained from operating a full bitcoin node and thus infer the health and activity of the Bitcoin Network. But when I look at the front page, my curiousity side kicks into full overdrive with the ‘Oooh Shiny Buttons‘ mentality. the WTFM link really helped me understand more easily. Bear with me, I’ve only touched Statoshi one time before today and I was totally overwhelmed with what I should or shouldn’t try and what the heck everything possibly meant. In my picture above, I used my mouse to drag in on the current time and last few blocks solved as of me snapping that screenshot. The green area get taller whenever a block is solved so you can get an idea of how long it takes for a transaction to confirm. Here’s a few other screens of things I found by clicking that home button on the upper left, which is just a copy of the dashboards to the right. Some make a lot of sense, others, like this one for hdd space I don’t know if they are talking about full hdd space taken up by bitcoin core or if thats fully used hdd space from the system itself, including OS and Stats software.
Its a mixed bag of understanding but definitely ignorance in there too. I guess I’ll google those things in my caption and report the findings at a later point in time.
How can I tell if bitcoin is forking?
First of all lets define forking here: a Fork, or derivation could mean just that – in either product software or in verification of data. When people say ‘hard fork’ or ‘soft fork’ they are talking about the update or enforcement of rules in software, if users are talking about bitcoin itself just forked, there’s now 2 chains or 3 chains or more, they are talking about the integrity of the data. There are two ore more sources for the longest blockchain now. Imagine a chain link fence that had a chain that split apart into two or 3 separate paths (a ring joint instead of a normal link-lett). When there is a bitcoin data fork, the longest chain will prevail and the others will be discarded as ‘orphaned’ blocks. Orphaned blocks have no value…any miners who earned income will lose it from orphaned blocks – the coins will be invalid and unspendable.
I looked long and hard, but unfortunately I could not find an out the box service provider or method that allows me to determine if Bitcoin is currently forking, it seem the best way is through checking between various block explorers if you can – I’d suggest Blockr.io and blockchain.info if you don’t already run bitcoin core. Also word of mouth works too. If you use a full node or even a pruned node of Bitcoin Core, you should be able to see post Bitcoin Core Version .09 fork adjustment…according to PhantomCircuit of IRC anyway.
A Bitcoin hard fork or soft-fork with relation to upgrading the software will be discussed in great detail by reddit or bitcointalk so following bitcoin news in general will keep you up to speed on those developments. (FYI: Soft Fork means a software based update that takes effect with no foreseen problems or issues to users of the old software. A Hard Fork requires users to update their software in order to continue expected usage and proper functionality of their Bitcoin.)
Final notes
Sure it was easy enough to determine if bitcoin was forking by what they mentioned, but ultimately, because I too use SPV, I decided in my own better interests to run a full node and eventually prune it once its been completed (pruning the Blockchain is a process of removing all data except the block headers for older blocks that no longer need confirmations.) Also, using Block Explorers to compare and contrast, works immediately, but be prepared to have to look at several so you can determine if they detect the faulty blocks generated. I heard about it early on through the IRC channels, eventually the news flocked to the traditional sources as well.
I would recommend tradeblock for the casual user who’s looking to see if there’s something going on with the network to cause lags in payment confirmations, and would only statoshi for users who are comfortable with tradeblock and want more data about specific periods of time in bitcoin or blockchain transaction history – drilling down data is easier to do with Statoshi so also keep that in mind if you plan to look at past events or parallel events often – Statoshi has tradeblock beat by leaps and bounds. What trading tools do you use or recommend to bitcoin users for monitoring the network? Let’s discuss in the comments.
