Now you can watch the balance of a particular address generated by the API just by knowing the address. This is useful, for example, if you wanted to create a pay now button and display to the user how much BTC has been received so far and to redirect the user when payment is complete.

Here is the example code for watching an address: https://bitlab.co/docs/#watch

Using Firebase and NodeJS we have created a clustering solution for bitcoind that allows you to use several bitcoind servers to serve a single system.

https://github.com/bitlabco/bitlab-nodejs

It consists of three nodes:

1. Address Node - listens for new address requests and generates a new address from a randomly selected bitcoind.

2. Receive Node - listens for new payments from each bitcoind, updates the account balance and generates a transaction record.

3. Send Node - listens for new withdrawal requests and sends the bitcoins from the first available bitcoind with sufficient balance.

Check out our website: https://bitlab.co

Using our cloud API you will be able to create a Bitcoin exchange that executes trades in real-time without having to manage any servers. This is perfect for startups since you don't have to pay for anything. However, everything is open source, so if you do want to use your own hardware that's possible too. This will be an extension of our real-time wallet API that is already available at https://bitlab.co/wallet (Source Code: https://github.com/bitlabco/bitlab-wallet).

You can read more about what makes our API so awesome at http://firebase.com/ or read the developer guide at https://bitlab.co/docs. We also have a sandbox at https://bitlab.co/sandbox that uses testnet, just in case you don't want to use real money.

More source code will be released soon. Feedback or questions are always welcome! Follow us on Twitter https://twitter.com/bitlab_co for faster and more frequents updates!

Introducing Bitlab's real-time Bitcoin wallet API!

https://bitlab.co/

Q1. How is this different from running bitcoind and using RPC to manage everything?

A1. That requires you to buy hosting, manage the server, backup the wallet, etc. Also, if you want to scale your service, you'll need to invest in more servers, setup clustering and load balancing. Wouldn't it be nice to replace all of that with a free, easy-to-use API? That's what our service does and more.

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Q2. How is this different from blockchain.info and other web based wallet API's?

A2. Our API is built using Firebase. To understand part of why our API is so awesome, you need to understand why Firebase is awesome. Firebase allows you to write a real-time scalable service that automatically notifies and synchronizes multiple clients when data is added, changed or deleted to the database rather than the clients having to constantly poll for updates. See their multiplayer Tetris demo (https://www.firebase.com/tutorial/#example/tetris) that was built using hardly any network code because Firebase handles all of the synchronization for you.

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Q3. Do you have a demo?

A3. Yes, we've built a single page wallet app using our API. This is a complete wallet app that is entirely HTML, JavaScript and CSS. There is no backend required because we provide that for you.

Demo: https://bitlab.co/wallet

Source Code: https://github.com/bitlabco/bitlab-wallet

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Q4. How much does it cost?

A4. Nothing! It's free AND open source. If you don't want to use our infrastructure, build your own!

We've launched a new startup called Bitlab. Our web address is https://bitlab.co and our service is cutting edge. If you don't know what Firebase is then check it out at http://www.firebase.com but the TL;DR version is that it's a real-time RESTish backend for your data. A pretty cool demo is at http://www.sflivebus.com/ which shows how updating data in the backend automatically syncs data across all of your clients in real-time with just a few lines of JavaScript.

What we're providing are two Firebase services, one at https://bitlab.firebaseio.com and the other at https://bitlab-sandbox.firebaseio.com which provide wallet services to both the regular Bitcoin network and the testnet Bitcoin network respectively. You can see simple wallet apps that we've written using the API at https://bitlab.co/wallet for the regular network and https://bitlab.co/sandbox. These are demo apps that show how you can use our API. However, we will be providing a wallet service as a reference application so feel free to use our wallet service on a permanent basis.

We are also working with one of our partners to provide the first ever real-time exchange based in the US with full compliance of KYC and AML.

TL;DR

Use our service to create real-time single page bitcoin apps without having to write a backend.

Check out a working demo at https://bitlab.co/wallet

Source code coming soon!