TL;DR: a DNS interface to Bitcoin address balances, allowing instant querying of any address balance from any Internet-connected computer, with caching (up to 60 seconds) handled by the global DNS network.
Full details here:
http://dnscoin.nz/Example of use:
$ host -t TXT 05e95dbb25283cc35d4a6aefa76c0382e63ce0fa366edabd47.bal.dnscoin.nz
05e95dbb25283cc35d4a6aefa76c0382e63ce0fa366edabd47.bal.dnscoin.nz descriptive text "14095582050855"Because DNS labels are case-insensitive, we use the hex encoding of the address. To make querying from the command line easier, we've released a simple command-line utility,
bal:
$ pip install bal
$ bal 3Nxwenay9Z8Lc9JBiywExpnEFiLp6Afp8v
140955.82050855
$ bal -s 3Nxwenay9Z8Lc9JBiywExpnEFiLp6Afp8v
14095582050855
$ cat whales.txt | bal
3Nxwenay9Z8Lc9JBiywExpnEFiLp6Afp8v: 140955.82050855
3J5KeQSVBUEs3v2vEEkZDBtPLWqLTuZPuD: 83553.31541517
1FeexV6bAHb8ybZjqQMjJrcCrHGW9sb6uF: 79957.1160523
3NDQz8rZ3CnmsiBGrATk8SCpDXF2sAUiuM: 53000.01094367Advantages over existing HTTP APIs include high performance and reliability through decentralisation and efficient distributed short-term caching handled by the existing DNS infrastructure. For this public beta we have a single cluster in Europe, but we will add additional locations over the coming weeks to ensure reliability and high performance.
We're working on a powerful blockchain analytics and querying platform based on our own indexing software and tools. We plan to release various simple but reliable services to the public for free as we progress with our work; this is the first of these services.
