Bitcoin Forum

I am creating a new site which accepts bitcoin, and of all the available APIs I found the documentation for blockchain.info's to be by far the easiest to understand, so I have successfully implemented it into my site.

The problem is that I am frequently experiencing long delays between a customer sending me bitcoins and my site receiving the callback to confirm that a customer has paid. Sometimes the callback is instant- but other times the delay can be hours, at one time over 12 hours.

Has anyone else experienced this? It seems to be that this makes their API effectively unusable?

I used it, however I found that the delay was too long to be used for today's standards. Make your own solution, don't use blockchains. Sometimes it actually doesn't send the notification.

So you're saying the delay isn't just due to a specific problem right now, it's always been like this!?

When you said I could use my own solution, do you mean, not use an API at all? Sorry for noob question but I am an amateur at this, I just do web development for a hobby.

The bit-x signature campaign payouts are regularly stalled and delayed by the blockchain.info API playing up. I think it's a pretty regular occurrence. They've mentioned it being a problem repeatedly over the last few weeks.

Bit-x does not use the blockchain.info receive API. They use the regular API which is usually instant/never down, however sending a lot of requests to them may get you blocked from using their API until you request full access manually

No it hasn't always been like this, it used to be next to instant.
When I made my how-to tutorial video on using blockchain receive API it forwarded the payment immediately.

The proof is in the pudding, start the vid at 15 minutes if it doesn't automatically start there.
https://youtu.be/vWt9wRZ3Hhk?t=15m5s

You can wait it out or switch to a different service like blockcypher payment forwarding.

This also happened to my transactions but from what I gathered they said blockchain.info api is undergoing a stress test and they shall soon get over it but nobody knows when.

Hey buddy, I emailed them and they said exactly this. However, this leads to two questions, both of which I asked them- I will post the reply. The two questions:

1) Why does a stress test affect the API? The stress test should only affect confirmation times- I'm meant to get a callback at zero confirmations, so what does the stress test have to do with it?
2) Since stress tests are going to be a common thing until the block size increase, what are you guys doing to to upgrade your system to cope?

If anyone here has any insight into either of these questions I would love to hear.

The stress test involves all the bitcoin processes from sending to receiving so API will not be excluded.
For your other question, I have heard of some people choosing other network apart from blockchain.info but none have posted their success yet.

Ok thanks man. I still don't really understand- I thought we could easily get around all problems related to the stress test simply by increasing fees? Wouldn't that solve the problem they are having?

Not in this case because the issue is about the source of bitcoin itself and only few people have control of it.

An alternative to the blockchain.info API is the Chain.com API. It's very easy to get up and running and the documentation is very robust, and there is support for various languages, or simple CURL requests.

OP is looking for payment forwarding. Chain.com API DOES NOT offer this with their API. Also I have noticed chain's API is VERY unreliable especially their websocket API. Blockcypher offers payment forwarding if you are looking for an alternative.

Chain API works wonders with indexing and listing transactions. When I was indexing transactions using blockchain it was very slow and I actually got locked out due to so many requests needed, I needed to go manually from tx 1 to 25, then 26 to 50, then 51 to 76, you get the picture. With chain I am currently listing the last 500 transactions, and since there is API keys I don't get locked out and it is near instant.