Introducing OXT, a tool for Exploratory Blockchain Analysis

[oxt_btc]

I've been working on a platform dedicated to the analysis of the bitcoin blockchain. The first application built on top of this plateform is OXT (the Other eXploration Tool).

OXT provides a set of statistics & interactive visual tools easing the exploration of the blockchain (interactive charts for drill down/filtering, transactions graph visualizer, ...).

Screenshots: https://i.imgur.com/tuV9SDv.png

In addition, OXT computes a set of privacy-oriented metrics (address reuse, entropy of transactions, link probability between uxtos, temporal patterns of activity...) and uses a few heuristics allowing to cluster addresses controlled by a same entity.

The project is at an early stage but I hope its first features will be useful to the community. Feel free to send your feedback & suggestions !

Last but not least, OXT supports the Open Bitcoin Privacy Project in its mission to improve financial privacy within the Bitcoin ecosystem.


Resources:
- A video explaining how to explore the blockchain with OXT
- A video explaining how to explore the graph of transactions with OXT Graphalizer
- About OXT
- FAQ (technical requirements, "how to", ...)

Contacts:
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/oxt_btc
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/oxtcommunity
- Email: oxt.btc@gmail.com

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[batesresearch]

That is a beautiful and very useful platform, nice work.

Shame it doesn't work on my iPad!

[achow101]

This is a great site and I think it rivals walletexplorer.com. It is the only other site that I know of that groups addresses together.

Is this site open source?

[oxt_btc]

That is a beautiful and very useful platform, nice work.

Shame it doesn't work on my iPad!

Agreed
TBH, implementing this kind of tool on tablets is a challenge per se because of UX.
For now, it's out of my reach because of limited resources but may be in the future...

This is a great site and I think it rivals walletexplorer.com. It is the only other site that I know of that groups addresses together.

Is this site open source?

Not yet. I hope it will become open source in the future but I can't give a ETA (code not ready for prime time, missing documentation, resources for support, ...).

[micaman]

Great work on that tool!
I'm just confused while reading the block size chart where, for example, it says:

Charts / Transactions / Block Size
Monthly Stats from January 2009 to January 2016 - Lin. Scale

December 2015

Aggregate: 3157779464 bytes
Maximum: 122842930 bytes
Minimum: 78795102 bytes

Am I reading this wrong or does it say that the minimum block size in December 2015 was ~75MB?

[oxt_btc]

Great work on that tool!
I'm just confused while reading the block size chart where, for example, it says:

Charts / Transactions / Block Size
Monthly Stats from January 2009 to January 2016 - Lin. Scale

December 2015

Aggregate: 3157779464 bytes
Maximum: 122842930 bytes
Minimum: 78795102 bytes

Am I reading this wrong or does it say that the minimum block size in December 2015 was ~75MB?

These stats should be read like this:
- The cumulated size of blocks mined in December 2015 was ~3.15GB
- The max value for blocks mined during 1 day of this month was ~122MB (actually it was on 12/14/2015)
- The min value was ~78MB (on 12/31/2015)

You can check this by clicking on the chart with the mouse put on December. The chart will display the same metric for december 2015 only and you'll see the max and min values very easily.

Note that the same principle applies at this level (but this time it's related to blocks mined during a given day).

The FAQ page contains a short help about the interactive charts. But my english is crap and I fear some points may remain unclear (sorry about that). Feel free to asks more questions if needed.

[batesresearch]

That is a beautiful and very useful platform, nice work.

Shame it doesn't work on my iPad!

Agreed
TBH, implementing this kind of tool on tablets is a challenge per se because of UX.
For now, it's out of my reach because of limited resources but may be in the future...

Understood but still an amazing tool to add to the Bitcoin arsenal, great job!

[micaman]

Great work on that tool!
I'm just confused while reading the block size chart where, for example, it says:

Charts / Transactions / Block Size
Monthly Stats from January 2009 to January 2016 - Lin. Scale

December 2015

Aggregate: 3157779464 bytes
Maximum: 122842930 bytes
Minimum: 78795102 bytes

Am I reading this wrong or does it say that the minimum block size in December 2015 was ~75MB?

These stats should be read like this:
- The cumulated size of blocks mined in December 2015 was ~3.15GB
- The max value for blocks mined during 1 day of this month was ~122MB (actually it was on 12/14/2015)
- The min value was ~78MB (on 12/31/2015)

You can check this by clicking on the chart with the mouse put on December. The chart will display the same metric for december 2015 only and you'll see the max and min values very easily.

Note that the same principle applies at this level (but this time it's related to blocks mined during a given day).

The FAQ page contains a short help about the interactive charts. But my english is crap and I fear some points may remain unclear (sorry about that). Feel free to asks more questions if needed.

Got it, clear answer. Thanks!

[Emerge]

Wow great tool man. Perfect for somehow getting a better, clearer view on the blockchain without having to be as techy as most people here on the forum lol.

Regards,
Jm Erestain

[achow101]

Couple of suggestions:

For transactions, can you have a full breakdown of the exact details of a transaction? Maybe in technical? Also, there should be some way to view the input and output scripts.
For blocks you should have it so that we can view all of the transactions included in the block.

[oxt_btc]

For transactions, can you have a full breakdown of the exact details of a transaction? Maybe in technical? Also, there should be some way to view the input and output scripts.

The point is well taken.

For blocks you should have it so that we can view all of the transactions included in the block.

Yep. It may be something like an additional tab listing the transactions.
Meanwhile, you can get the full list of transactions with these 2 steps:
- click on a bar of a bar chart. A popup displays the filtered list of transactions.
- click on the link "[Remove filter]" (upper right corner of the popup). The popup displays the full list of transactions included in the block.

[dooglus]

This is an interesting tool.

I was just playing with it, and found a node I couldn't expand fully.

https://oxt.me/graph/transaction/tiid/513316177 -- txid 7ea549d6503d18a35bc5254bc03594db57ec59c6197dab6a442e996588706006

It has 8 inputs (all shown) and 6 outputs (of which only 4 are shown). The biggest output isn't shown, and it only shows 2 of the three ~64 BTC outputs.

Any idea why?



Edit: This one too is missing a bunch of outputs: https://oxt.me/graph/transaction/tiid/512934694

It only shows two of the four 91 BTC outputs.

[oxt_btc]

@dooglus
Here's the explanation:
Nodes displayed in the graph are transactions and edges are txos (inputs/outputs).
If a txo is unspent, there's no "next" transaction. It implies that unspent outputs don't appear in the graph because an edge needs a source and a target node.

Tip: If you put your mouse over the 2nd and 5th outputs in the "Transaction Details" panel, you'll see that they're marked as unspent.

That being said, this is an issue noted in my todo list and for which I'm still looking for a good solution (in term of UX).

[dooglus]

Nodes displayed in the graph are transactions and edges are txos (inputs/outputs).

If a txo is unspent, there's no "next" transaction. It implies that unspent outputs don't appear in the graph because an edge needs a source and a target node.

Oh, of course.

I knew there would be an explanation.

That being said, this is an issue noted in my todo list and for which I'm still looking for a good solution (in term of UX).

How about having unspent outputs show as an edge like any other, but with the destination node having radius zero, so it looks like an edge going nowhere. Then you can show the size of the unspent output using an arrow on the edge.

Edit: I think it would be useful to have the "(unspent)" displayed at all times, not only when moused over. Maybe use a darker colour like #777 or something so it's not too distracting, but still noticeable.

[Itskok]

This is great, I love Blockchain analysis products, I think that the best Bitcoin products can come from Big data + UX/UI.
I am also developing some product, https://www.riders.io/ so your website can be really helpful for me. I am always looking for new and updated Blockchain API's...
You are planning to have an API ?
And here are some other nice stuff that quite similar to you, you maybe know them, try to add some "interesting" data that the others dont have..
https://www.blockonomics.co/
https://www.scorechain.com/
https://www.blockseer.com/
https://bitiodine.net/
I will follow you 

[oxt_btc]

How about having unspent outputs show as an edge like any other, but with the destination node having radius zero, so it looks like an edge going nowhere. Then you can show the size of the unspent output using an arrow on the edge.

What about a smaller node with a different shape ?

Edit: I think it would be useful to have the "(unspent)" displayed at all times, not only when moused over. Maybe use a darker colour like #777 or something so it's not too distracting, but still noticeable.

I like it ! Added in the todo list.

You are planning to have an API ?

Yes ! Access to the API is on the roadmap.

Try to add some "interesting" data that the others dont have..

Sure. Actually, I started to work on this tool because existing tools didn't provide data or features I was looking for (interactive charts, privacy-oriented metrics, ...) or are reserved to institutional actors.

[dooglus]

How about having unspent outputs show as an edge like any other, but with the destination node having radius zero, so it looks like an edge going nowhere. Then you can show the size of the unspent output using an arrow on the edge.

What about a smaller node with a different shape ?

Yeah. A small diamond shape, outline only (not filled in), so it is obviously different.

[oxt_btc]

Yeah. A small diamond shape, outline only (not filled in), so it is obviously different.

Here is a preview (it will be included in next update).

https://i.imgur.com/XthC06j.png

Details:
- I've kept the size of diamonds "proportional" to the amount of the output. That seems better.
- I've shortened the label "(unspent)" in "(U)" (with a contextual help on mouse hover). It's displayed at all times.

[oxt_btc]

A new version of the platform has been deployed !

Improvements

- Height of last block processed by the platform is displayed in the footer.

- OXT Graphalizer: Unspent outputs are displayed in the graph.

- New icon used for the Graphalizer.

New Features

- Detection of OP_RETURNs associated to BIP47 payment codes (example)

- New tool: OXT Requester
  The Requester allows users to build dynamic queries.
  For this release, the tool provides a request allowing to retrieve transactions by time range and/or by transaction volume.
  Additional requests will be added in next releases.
  The requester can be accessed through a link displayed in the header.


Tip: Clear the cache of your browser in case of a problem.

[oxt_btc]

A new version of the platform has been deployed.

Works have been focused on the internals of the platform (code cleaning & refactoring, improvement of performances, ...). So, nothing fancy to announce. 

Tip: Clear the cache of your browser to get the latest version of the tool.