Blockchain.info - Bitcoin Block explorer & Currency Statistics

[piuk]

Is the Sofort deposit method something you are working on or should it be active now?

Reactivating sofort requires opening a bank account with sofort themselves and also a local polish account. I put in the applications early last week so hopefully it won't be too much longer before it can be enabled again.

there is something wrong with the profit/loss at the 'bet with satoshidice' page.

What is wrong with it?

Almost finished with the "pirate speak" translation, Piuk, is there a way I can send it to you do do some tests?

Sure, open a pull request and I will test it.

Piuk,

If I go to Account Settings and set another language, I'll be disconnected, being necessary to login again.

Why?

Could you change it?

This is not possible to change as the language text is part of the html page which requires refreshing to change.

Quick sidenote, not sure if this is the right place to ask but, is there an available api for fetching info on wins/losses on satoshi dice? It would be cool to make something like this - http://www.instructables.com/id/Twitter-Mood-Light-The-Worlds-Mood-in-a-Box/ with the wins and losses effecting the color  

This api is undocumented but you could call /walletprofitloss to calculate the difference between the amount sent from an input address to a destination address and the  amount returned from the destination address to the input address. Multiple addresses separated with |

http://blockchain.info/walletprofitloss?input_address=1A8JiWcwvpY7tAopUkSnGuEYHmzGYfZPiq&output_address=1dice97ECuByXAvqXpaYzSaQuPVvrtmz6| 1dicegEArYHgbwQZhvr5G9Ah2s7SFuW1y

total_received - total_sent = "profit"

I'm missing the list of mining pools that have seen an unconfirmed tx in the "Transaction Summary".
It was there before the last big change of the site.

btw.:

[...] is there an available api for fetching info on wins/losses on satoshi dice?

Have you looked at the actual satoshidice.com website?  The link is on top of blockchain's
satoshi-bet chart.

second btw.:
According to https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=92829.msg1286465#msg1286465 the btcdice has
been "temporarily taken down", and there hasn't been a word since about being back. Also, btcdice.com
has a "down for maintenance"-banner.
Maybe, the btcdice-plugin should be removed for the time being, or at least a warning-banner
added to the bet-chart.

btcdice has been removed. The mining pool ip addresses are missing because I haven't been updating them as much.

Have you looked into it ?
I think it's an important feature for a wallet to send what its told to, not some other random amount

This will need to be fixed in the next update.

Does anyone else gets altered balance if anonymous transaction is used?

I'd like to send exactly X amount, but destination address gets X.something

Example:

I enter exactly 10btc to be sent anonymously... the receiver gets 10.0001 btc.

Is this a bug?

This has been fixed now.

Would you consider extending your taint analysis tool by some tagging functionality? Maybe add an input box next to every address to link the address to some entity/website/forum post? The collected information could be presented on mouse-over with up/down vote buttons to sort multiple references.

I suggested something like that as a stand-alone page but of course you already have the most interesting part in place. You could even charge money for tagging I mean seriously if people could add any advertisement to highly visible addresses, charging money could be justified as a spam counter measure. People feeling strong about linking an address to some page will easily be willing to pay one dollar. (And please add sort by fees next to the default sort by votes)

I like the idea of tagging. Moderation would have to be in place though otherwise scammers could tag their address "Mt.Gox Deposit Address" and convince newbies to deposit there.

Ben, I saw many pages back you mentioned a new version of the android wallet app that fixes the crashing on tablets.. any ETA when it'll be available?

Hopefully soon, I have been quite ill this past week and haven't had the will to finish it.

So what happens to the amount remaining if I am sending less than the available input(s) used?  Is it returned back to that address from the private key?

Yeah, the change will be returned to the sending address.

Hi piuk, can you please add Czech language to translations? I will translate it.
Thanks.

I will gladly add Czech if you are able translate it. Basically this file needs translating https://github.com/blockchain/Blockchain-Translations/blob/master/language.json. As a side note, I got a quote from a professional translation service to do the entire site and they wanted £52k! So any help with translations is greatly appreciated.

would be nice if I, sending BTC, could just enter the name of the recipient (as it is saved in my adress book) into the target adress field.

in the android app, this works.

This should work, do you not get an auto complete drop down?

what exactly is going on here?

Yes, I make my living as a fraudster, so I have decided to share some money with you... LOL

Yes, I'm fraudster and I make money by scamming idiots around the world, so I have decided to share some of my money with you, losers.

These are public notes that you can include with transactions using the Custom Send form. I guess the address 1FRAUD belongs to a scammer, very subtle

Hi Piuk,
I tried the 'phone deposit' and it works fine. I just had a wtf moment with "you can use this service max 3 times per month"
why's that, please?

Steal someones phone -> Buy lots of bitcoins -> Owner reports phone stolen -> Operator reverses transactions -> Owner gets money back -> Scammer keeps BTC -> We lose.

For this reason the amount you can purchase has to be heavily limited.

Updates

- New tool to import wallet.dat https://blockchain.info/wallet/import-wallet
- Limit on number of addresses increased to 1000. The limit on addresses generated using the API will be removed shortly.
- PingIt limit increased to £500.
- Lots of bug fixes.

[giszmo]

Would you consider extending your taint analysis tool by some tagging functionality? Maybe add an input box next to every address to link the address to some entity/website/forum post? The collected information could be presented on mouse-over with up/down vote buttons to sort multiple references.

I suggested something like that as a stand-alone page but of course you already have the most interesting part in place. You could even charge money for tagging I mean seriously if people could add any advertisement to highly visible addresses, charging money could be justified as a spam counter measure. People feeling strong about linking an address to some page will easily be willing to pay one dollar. (And please add sort by fees next to the default sort by votes)

I like the idea of tagging. Moderation would have to be in place though otherwise scammers could tag their address "Mt.Gox Deposit Address" and convince newbies to deposit there.

I'm happy you like the idea

People will know that tags can be bought easily. Show how much was paid for each of them.
Scammers will get scam-warning-tags just underneath – and you get money for that.
You could distribute the money paid for tags against your TOS to those that tagged the tag as scam.
If you charge a minimum fee for tagging, you can afford to moderate the tags.

If patrolling/taking responsibility for tags is not what you want to do, I suggest you do as follows:
Provide a tool to efficiently embed messages in the blockchain in combination with a payment to one of your addresses.
Provide a site that lists all these comments.

[Binford 6100]

Hi Piuk,
I tried the 'phone deposit' and it works fine. I just had a wtf moment with "you can use this service max 3 times per month"
why's that, please?

Steal someones phone -> Buy lots of bitcoins -> Owner reports phone stolen -> Operator reverses transactions -> Owner gets money back -> Scammer keeps BTC -> We lose.

For this reason the amount you can purchase has to be heavily limited.

ok, I can follow your chain of thoughts but can't find out if the limit was imposed by you or the payment processor.
I can as well 'prove' it's my phone (have the PIN/PUK card that was issued with the SIM).
just want to dump 100+ pounds in that phone payment service because it's a prepaid SIM and I have no other use for it unless I can sell that card to someone else. nvmd. will set up a monthly reminder to get rid of it in tranches ...

[willphase]

there is something wrong with the profit/loss at the 'bet with satoshidice' page.

What is wrong with it?

not showing my complete profit/loss either - not that I actually want to face the truth of knowing it   PM me for details on my addresses if you need to test.

Will

[piuk]

I'm happy you like the idea

People will know that tags can be bought easily. Show how much was paid for each of them.
Scammers will get scam-warning-tags just underneath – and you get money for that.
You could distribute the money paid for tags against your TOS to those that tagged the tag as scam.
If you charge a minimum fee for tagging, you can afford to moderate the tags.

If patrolling/taking responsibility for tags is not what you want to do, I suggest you do as follows:
Provide a tool to efficiently embed messages in the blockchain in combination with a payment to one of your addresses.
Provide a site that lists all these comments.

What about this... The owner of a website puts a file on their website called bitcoin_tags.json or something like that. This would server a similar purpose to sitemap.xml but instead contains a number of bitcoin addresses and labels.

For example http://wikileaks.org/bitcoin_tags.json

{
 "tags" : {
  "address" : "1HB5XMLmzFVj8ALj6mfBsbifRoD4miY36v",
  "tag" : "Donations",
  "sig" : "signature of concatenated tag and domain"
 }
}

Once the owner of a website has added the file they can suggest that blockchain.info indexes it, once indexed blockchain.info will display the new tag accordingly. This has the advantage of.

* maintainable, webmaster can update bitcoin_tags.json as they choose. Deadlinks will be removed from the database.
* Decentralised, any service can index tags.
* More secure, both the domain and the address signature is verified. Tags can be independently verified if necessary and little moderation is needed.

Provide a tool to efficiently embed messages in the blockchain in combination with a payment to one of your addresses.

This can be done, but the main devs have made it clear they do not want messages embedded in the blockchain.

ok, I can follow your chain of thoughts but can't find out if the limit was imposed by you or the payment processor

It is enforced by us and is unlikely to be changed for the foreseeable future, sorry.

not showing my complete profit/loss either - not that I actually want to face the truth of knowing it  PM me for details on my addresses if you need to test.

This is really hard for me to test because the results sets are large. I need to find an example of a specific transaction which is definitely missing.

-------------

New donation button generator on address pages:



New chart trade volume vs transaction volume:

http://blockchain.info/charts/tx-trade-ratio (see http://codinginmysleep.com/measuring-bitcoin-speculation/)

[giszmo]

I'm happy you like the idea

People will know that tags can be bought easily. Show how much was paid for each of them.
Scammers will get scam-warning-tags just underneath – and you get money for that.
You could distribute the money paid for tags against your TOS to those that tagged the tag as scam.
If you charge a minimum fee for tagging, you can afford to moderate the tags.

If patrolling/taking responsibility for tags is not what you want to do, I suggest you do as follows:
Provide a tool to efficiently embed messages in the blockchain in combination with a payment to one of your addresses.
Provide a site that lists all these comments.

What about this... The owner of a website puts a file on their website called bitcoin_tags.json or something like that. This would server a similar purpose to sitemap.xml but instead contains a number of bitcoin addresses and labels.

For example http://wikileaks.org/bitcoin_tags.json

{
 "tags" : {
  "address" : "1HB5XMLmzFVj8ALj6mfBsbifRoD4miY36v",
  "tag" : "Donations",
  "sig" : "signature of concatenated tag and domain"
 }
}

Once the owner of a website has added the file they can suggest that blockchain.info indexes it, once indexed blockchain.info will display the new tag accordingly. This has the advantage of.

* maintainable, webmaster can update bitcoin_tags.json as they choose. Deadlinks will be removed from the database.
* Decentralised, any service can index tags.
* More secure, both the domain and the address signature is verified. Tags can be independently verified if necessary and little moderation is needed.

Not sure if I'm following you. http://fluxcards.de/bitcoin_tags.json now holds a signature of "http://fluxcards.de/testing tags" signed with the address in question.

I do agree this is a very safe way to get people identify their own addresses but my original idea was to have a way to also tag other addresses. Scammers will not give their own addresses a scammer tag. Many very public addresses scream to get indexed somehow but their owners won't host such a file. Yet I'm sure people would pay to enter addresses in some index.

I'm thinking about doing it myself but blockchain.info already has most things in place needed to implement such an index and it would definitely drive traffic to your site if the bitcoins paid to tag stuff is not enough of an incentive.

[piuk]

[I do agree this is a very safe way to get people identify their own addresses but my original idea was to have a way to also tag other addresses. Scammers will not give their own addresses a scammer tag. Many very public addresses scream to get indexed somehow but their owners won't host such a file. Yet I'm sure people would pay to enter addresses in some index.

I see what you mean. The foundations for an address tagging system are in now.





So just a good system is needed for users to submit their own tags. Either:

- Directly on the block explorer pages, I'm not quite what this would look like since address pages are quite cluttered anyway. Maybe just double click in place to edit an address.
- A new page specifically for submitting, up / down voting and reporting spam tags.
- Have an address that you can send a transaction to which contains a tag embedded within one of the scripts. This is abusing the blockchain a bit though.
- json file which you can upload to a webserver which will blockchain will index. Downside is you can't tag other people's addresses.

I'm not sure which would be best, what do you think?

[giszmo]

- A new page specifically for submitting, up / down voting and reporting spam tags.

This would make most sense for you as this would be an incentive to open an account on blockchain.info. Up/Down-voting could be done by "donation" addresses which again would be good for you.
As long as you show the amount of donations as justification to rate something high, you should not be blamed for misrepresenting stuff and upon clear abuse you could close accounts or users and mark the tag as coming from a closed account. Showing tags from closed accounts last, only optionally or not at all would also be very clear to the user.

- Have an address that you can send a transaction to which contains a tag embedded within one of the scripts. This is abusing the blockchain a bit though.

As you said, this would be a very temporary thing and should be avoided for the sake of bitcoin.

- json file which you can upload to a webserver which will blockchain will index. Downside is you can't tag other people's addresses.

You would still need a way to get aware of these files. I see this approach as the most open one although people might be more careful with scam accusations due to the real world identities linked to their servers – which of course is good for your liability.

[markeddrowsiness]

piuk - getting

"Error getting wallet balance" repeatedly starting ~11:45pm EST 11/15 with your online wallet service. i've tried refreshing, logging in/out, different browsers, same result

it also says, incorrectly under transactions: "Normally your bitcoin transactions would be listed here but you have not made any yet." (many have been made)

creepy man...

[Yuhfhrh]

I'm having problems too, looking up any address.

Edit: All is good now.

[ercolinux]

I've a problem with the wallet too. I've made a transaction 12 hours ago (and the receiver has got his btc), but in my wallet don't shows up. If I try to move some btc I got a "No operations allowed after connection closed.". I've the android app too and sometime don't let me login, when I success in login  the wallet shows the correct amount of bitcoin and the past transaction and btc transfer works.

[picobit]

creepy man...

The first times this happened to me I got a bit worried too   But it looks like blockchain.info has a failure mode where it looses connection to some backend, and data does not update.

[tehace]

I can confirm that blockchain support is top notch. I had a problem and they got back to me in far less than a day. Turns out my phone carrier doesn't support their sms bitcoin buying service but I imagine that is out of their hands.

[ercolinux]

I've a problem with the wallet too. I've made a transaction 12 hours ago (and the receiver has got his btc), but in my wallet don't shows up. If I try to move some btc I got a "No operations allowed after connection closed.". I've the android app too and sometime don't let me login, when I success in login  the wallet shows the correct amount of bitcoin and the past transaction and btc transfer works.

Now all seems to work 

[Gavin Andresen]

What about this... The owner of a website puts a file on their website called bitcoin_tags.json or something like that. This would server a similar purpose to sitemap.xml but instead contains a number of bitcoin addresses and labels.

For example http://wikileaks.org/bitcoin_tags.json

{
 "tags" : {
  "address" : "1HB5XMLmzFVj8ALj6mfBsbifRoD4miY36v",
  "tag" : "Donations",
  "sig" : "signature of concatenated tag and domain"
 }
}

Once the owner of a website has added the file they can suggest that blockchain.info indexes it, once indexed blockchain.info will display the new tag accordingly. This has the advantage of.

* maintainable, webmaster can update bitcoin_tags.json as they choose. Deadlinks will be removed from the database.
* Decentralised, any service can index tags.
* More secure, both the domain and the address signature is verified. Tags can be independently verified if necessary and little moderation is needed.

You should only trust tags fetched via https, otherwise a man-in-the-middle could hijack the .json file and replace the address and signature.

(and I think you'd want "tags" to be an Array of Objects...)

RE: adding data to the blockchain: Did you see Stefan Thomas' nifty idea for using ECC math to tie a hash to a transaction without any blockchain bloat?

[giszmo]

What about this... The owner of a website puts a file on their website called bitcoin_tags.json or something like that. This would server a similar purpose to sitemap.xml but instead contains a number of bitcoin addresses and labels.

For example http://wikileaks.org/bitcoin_tags.json

{
 "tags" : {
  "address" : "1HB5XMLmzFVj8ALj6mfBsbifRoD4miY36v",
  "tag" : "Donations",
  "sig" : "signature of concatenated tag and domain"
 }
}

Once the owner of a website has added the file they can suggest that blockchain.info indexes it, once indexed blockchain.info will display the new tag accordingly. This has the advantage of.

* maintainable, webmaster can update bitcoin_tags.json as they choose. Deadlinks will be removed from the database.
* Decentralised, any service can index tags.
* More secure, both the domain and the address signature is verified. Tags can be independently verified if necessary and little moderation is needed.

You should only trust tags fetched via https, otherwise a man-in-the-middle could hijack the .json file and replace the address and signature.

True … sort of. I'd be more interested in such a man in the middle being found in the wild than that I fear the risk of it aka I consider https being optional should be fine. It could be marked in the list as extra feature. Also showing historic tags or at least the timestamp of when a tag changed would help to get people aware of potential issues.

[picobit]

There is a problem with the mixer: it does not pay a fee for the outgoing transaction, so often it takes ages to confirm.  I have been waiting four hours so far 

[Beans]

Has their always been a password on the iphone app? I've used mine a few months and right when I sent a large transaction to my phone the app stopped working. I logged in with my pc about a month ago and backed up the wallet or atleast I though. I linked my email to my account but now it says email not found, and without a password my wallet file doesn't let me access it either.

[piuk]

But it looks like blockchain.info has a failure mode where it looses connection to some backend, and data does not update.

Apologies, yes one server lost it's database connection. If it problem ever occurs again it should auto-reconnect now.

This would make most sense for you as this would be an incentive to open an account on blockchain.info. Up/Down-voting could be done by "donation" addresses which again would be good for you.
As long as you show the amount of donations as justification to rate something high, you should not be blamed for misrepresenting stuff and upon clear abuse you could close accounts or users and mark the tag as coming from a closed account. Showing tags from closed accounts last, only optionally or not at all would also be very clear to the user.r liability.

For now a tag submission page is available at http://blockchain.info/tags. Also for a bit of geeky fun I indexed the addresses contained in signatures from bitcointalk.org example: http://blockchain.info/address/1H4sGgNSRvRuiUsbucsQBNFWhZcLnL2KW1

It doesn't include up or down voting as the tags in this context probably serve a slightly different purpose than your original idea giszmo. Which was to allow people to tag addresses as belonging to scammers, add comments etc? While I could see this being useful in some situations it has the danger of morphing into a blacklist which in my opinion is a bad idea all round.

You should only trust tags fetched via https, otherwise a man-in-the-middle could hijack the .json file and replace the address and signature.
(and I think you'd want "tags" to be an Array of Objects...)

Yep, your right on both counts. Extending this feed idea a bit further, what if it wasn't just for individuals websites but could the feeds could serve as a public directory of users as well. Basically a map of label@domain.org.

For example wallet services could all have a "Make address public" option which would then publish an address and label to the wallet services bitcoin_tags.json feed. Other wallet services can then index the feed of each service to build a public address book.

e.g. If I published the label "piuk" in the blockchain feed. Instawallet could then index the feed and resolve "piuk@blockchain.info" to the correct address. Bitcoin-Qt could publish to a @bitcoinfoundation.org feed, Electrum to @ecdsa.org etc.

RE: adding data to the blockchain: Did you see Stefan Thomas' nifty idea for using ECC math to tie a hash to a transaction without any blockchain bloat?

It's a nice trick, but is missing the most desired property that embedding data in the blockchain has, in that data is guaranteed to be permanently stored for as long as the bitcoin network is running.

There is a problem with the mixer: it does not pay a fee for the outgoing transaction, so often it takes ages to confirm.  I have been waiting four hours so far  

This should be patched this now, the mixer will be much more likely to pay a fee from now on.

------------

Tags Now Shown on the homepage:



"Tweet 4 BTC" promotion is back:



More SD Games available:



How My Wallet works infographic :

https://blockchain.info/wallet/how-it-works

Bonus Currently Active

https://blockchain.info/wallet/send-anonymously

[willphase]

my gtalk notifications seem to have stopped working... anyone else getting this?

[EDIT 21:50 UTC they all just came through...]

Will