Realtime Bitcoin Globe - visualizing all transactions and blocks

[whydifficult]

The Realtime Bitcoin Globe shows (almost) all transactions happening in the bitcoin network in realtime. It also shows freshly minted blocks.

Realtime Bitcoin Globe

- This is meant as a fun datavisualization / experiment.
- The locations are the relay IPs as reported by blockhchain.info.
- Since the network has more and more transactions the globe might auto rotate extremely fast. You can disable auto rotation in the bottom right.

I am still smoothing it out some bugs on different platforms. If something is not working (on platforms where WebGL is) please let me know!

Feedback is highly appreciated!

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This project is part of Wizbit, an upcoming service providing insights in financial data around crypto currencies.
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This project in the press:

- Wizbit blog
- The Next Web
- Hackernews
- Adafruit
- bittercoin
- launch.co
- omicrono
- pejcz

[RGBKey]

Wow, very impressive! Found another thing to endlessly stare at!

[whydifficult]

Wow, very impressive! Found another thing to endlessly stare at!

Thanks!

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Does anybody know where blockchain.info is located? A lot of transactions are relayed from them (all the Costa Rica based transactions on the globe) and this is the best I could find (based on the main IP of their website).

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I am still tweaking it a little based on feedback I received on twitter:

- I'm going to proper lighting to the blocks and transactions, possibly also add glows.
- The sizes of transactions will depend on the transaction sizes.
- Going to add sounds (especially on new blocks).

If anybody has suggestions let me know!

[RGBKey]

Why don't you make blocks a different color, and add information about the transaction on mouseover/click

[whydifficult]

Why don't you make blocks a different color, and add information about the transaction on mouseover/click

Good idea, blocks are now yellow and transactions are orange. Still think the colors can be improved (they don't really fit the sci-fi interface I think). So the last transaction info is displayed on the right, the last block info on the left. I've chosen to not do anything on mouse click because of the speed the globe is auto rotating as new transactions come in (now less than in the weekend for some reason). I think it would be frustrating to do anything on click as you can already use the mouse to rotate the globe and it auto rotates about every second (on average, depends on bitcoin transactions ofcourse).

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Just a tip: this looks great on a projector. I sometimes give presentations about Bitcoin and have put this in my presentation to showcase the global network. If you're thinking on doing the same but don't like some things let me know and I can alter it / put live a different version specific to your needs.

[whydifficult]

After lots and lots of complains about people getting headaches, the auto zoom en each transaction is now a toggle. It's off on default. Also some improvements on the backend & the blocks are now different sizes depending on transaction size (only the orange ones for transactions, the yellow ones for blocks are all the same size).

[minifrij]

This is awesome, now all you need is something like Listentobitcoin in there and you will have the ultimate experience haha

[culexevilman]

This is awesome, now all you need is something like Listentobitcoin in there and you will have the ultimate experience haha

Nice work.

[whydifficult]

This is awesome, now all you need is something like Listentobitcoin in there and you will have the ultimate experience haha

Thanks.

I'll give adding sounds on transactions / blocks a priority, I'm thinking of making multiple (sound) themes, like sci-fi / relax / etc. But first need to find decent sounds.

[RGBKey]

A better fit with the color scheme would be blue and green.

[whydifficult]

A better fit with the color scheme would be blue and green.

I'll experiment with it for a bit. All blocks were green before but the problem was that they were hard to see when zooming out because the whole globe is blue/green already.

[defaced]

I wish it was opensource because id love this for FRK

[whydifficult]

This project has been featured on The Next Web, read the story here:

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2014/02/04/virtual-globe-shows-almost-every-bitcoin-transaction-freshly-minted-block-real-time/

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I wish it was opensource because id love this for FRK

I think I will opensource it one day, though for now: I definitely want to incorporate multiple coins. If you can point me to a service similar to blockchain.info (with an API) for other coins I can do it myself.

[defaced]

This project has been featured on The Next Web, read the story here:

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2014/02/04/virtual-globe-shows-almost-every-bitcoin-transaction-freshly-minted-block-real-time/

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I wish it was opensource because id love this for FRK

I think I will opensource it one day, though for now: I definitely want to incorporate multiple coins. If you can point me to a service similar to blockchain.info (with an API) for other coins I can do it myself.

Here is one for FRK

frk.cryptocoinexplorer.com

and one for other coins

coinplorer.com

[whydifficult]

Here is one for FRK

frk.cryptocoinexplorer.com

and one for other coins

coinplorer.com

It's a realtime visualization which has quite specific requirements  Blockchain.info is the only party I found yet that is able to offer it. What I need is:

- Latest unconfirmed transactions
- Latest block finds

Blockchain offers it through a websocket which is ideal, though a REST api would also be fine (if I can hit it once every ~2 seconds).

If I would opensource the code how would you solve this problem?

[whydifficult]

Did some more improvements on the backend, also wrote a blogpost about this piece:

Read it on the Wizb.it blog. If you want to be the first to know, make sure you subscribed on the site so you'll get updated as soon as we have new stuff.

[whydifficult]

If it doesn't work on your browser you can check the visualization out on youtube here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-6kOgGcQ30

[whydifficult]

It appears that the Blockchain websocket API is currently experiencing problems. Therefor the project is currently not working (other similar projects are also effected).

I've reached out to Blockchain but have not heard back yet.

[whydifficult]

It appears that the Blockchain websocket API is currently experiencing problems. Therefor the project is currently not working (other similar projects are also effected).

I've reached out to Blockchain but have not heard back yet.

I've been in contact with Blockchain and they are working on it (this issue also effects their main website).

Tks for bringing this to our attention; our dev team will be informed. Sorry for any inconvenience - it's been a crazy week!

@blockchain

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I have faith in that blockchain will solve this issue and the globe will continue working automatically once they do.

[whydifficult]

I have faith in that blockchain will solve this issue and the globe will continue working automatically once they do.

The guys at Blockchain just solved the issue. The globe is fully functional again!

EDIT:

same goes for similar projects like listentobitcoin