Bitcoin Forum

Hi Guys,

I am working on a site that needs to collect bitcoin.

I don't get private keys, just xPubs.

It is a PHP backend, but I know node and anything else.

I want to be able to create addresses using the xPubs and then monitor those address for transactions. I don't need the monitoring to be live alerts. I can do checks on them at midnight or say when a user logs in to check their progress.

I need to know the number of blocks confirmed and the amounts of each transactions.

I have looked at many options, but none of the documents for the software mentions creating addresses without private keys. I am a little new to all this.

If someone could point me in the right direction, it would be much appreciated.

You can use an Electrum wallet for this. Install Electrum on the server and put a watch-only copy of the wallet onto that install. Then you can interact with it using the JSON-RPC interface. See http://docs.electrum.org/en/latest/merchant.html

Thanks, will check it out. But looking at it so far, it looks like this wallet interacts with web and is open on a port even if used behind the scene with PHP. I will look deeper, I assume there is a way to secure that.

Adding to my request is. I only have xPubx given to me. I need to be able to use those to create addresses. I noticed many wallets (like copay) you need to create the watch addresses using the private keys.

Well it still must be able to connect to the internet in order to get transaction details. Electrum connects to Electrum servers which do the address lookups and provide the client with the necessary transaction information so that you know how much Bitcoin you have and can then send the Bitcoin.

Electrum allows you to import a watch-only wallet using the xpub.

It is fine with connecting to the internet, I can just block that port from incoming connections, it is fine.


Do you have a link to something about that (I did search but didn't find it)? All the other wallet software I have been looking at seems to only be able to "import" a wallet created by it's software. I do not know what software is going to be used for the xPubs and will not be able to import it as I only have an xPub or several of them and not a wallet file.

Yes, I have for years been using electrum and has been used there is no problem as well as easy to use and simple. Besides, there are several options installation system that we can use.

There's only one outgoing connection. Electrum doesn't take incoming connections.

You can test it yourself. Make a new wallet, go to File > New/Restore and choose the option to make a standard wallet. Then click Next and choose the option to "Use public or private keys". Then click Next and the next window will have a box where you can enter the xpub to make a watch-only wallet.