Realtime Bitcoin webGL globe – visualizing all transactions and blocks

http://blocks.wizb.it/

by askmike • 12 years ago

53 37 12 years ago

blocks.wizb.it

mike_hearn3• 12 years ago

Doesn't work for me unfortunately, I see no textures and a lot of errors like this:

WebGL: INVALID_VALUE: texImage2D: width or height out of range

[.WebGLRenderingContext]RENDER WARNING: texture bound to texture unit 0 is not renderable. It maybe non-power-of-2 and have incompatible texture filtering or is not 'texture complete'

This is on a retina MacBook Pro. I guess there's some hw incompatibility there.

askmike11• 12 years ago

Darn, I also had this on Firefox. For non WebKit browser I already use a lower res texture. What browser did you use?

mike_hearn3• 12 years ago

Chrome 32. Globe texture shows up in Firefox though it's a little choppy.

Tmmrn• 12 years ago

Works fine on intel and radeonsi in linux in firefox nightly and chromium.

In firefox the textures are noticeably darker for some reason.

askmike11• 12 years ago

On firefox I ran into the out_of_range error with the clear image used in WebKit browser. So on Gecko browsers I load a smaller image (which is a bit darker).

mrdoob2• 12 years ago

Should be now fixed.

mike_hearn3• 12 years ago

Other feedback: I suspect there aren't really tons of transactions being relayed out of costa rica - is this possibly the origin point on your globe model or something? Are you filtering out transactions with no geocodable IP?

Really cool visualisation anyway. Like it!

askmike11• 12 years ago

I am currently unable to host a big node myself so I am relying on Bitcoincharts and the relay IP they detect. All transactions coming from Bitcoincharts itself (the wallet service) have the localhost IP (127.0.0.1). After being unable to find out where the company is based I've choosen to translate that IP to their main website IP (which is hosted in Costa Rica).

If anybody knows where Blockchain.info is based please let me know and I'll fix those transaction locations.

arscan• 12 years ago

Great stuff. Where do you get the data? I'm working on a geolocation-centric visualization in webgl that would be a good fit for this kind of realtime(ish) data.

askmike11• 12 years ago

Thanks!

All transaction and block data is from Blockchain.info (https://blockchain.info/api/api_websocket) (you can also get that from the Bitcoin network itself pretty easily) and all geo location data (ip to geo) is from freegeoip.net. All data is proxied through my own server, so I'm not hammering those services.

gelutu• 12 years ago

Don't make the cubes green.

askmike11• 12 years ago

I think they nicely represent my design skills. I'm all open for suggestions, what did you have in mind?

In the next version I want to color them on transaction volume (combined with square sizes).

jboggan• 12 years ago

Orange or gold will complement against the blue/green background, especially when you are popping/zooming out. They get lost in the background when the view pulls out.

askmike11• 12 years ago

I've now turned them orange, which improves the visibility a ton. Though I want to fix the lighting and color them based on variables instead of making them so plain as they are now.

ionwake• 12 years ago

A new competitor I see? ;)

I developed the same code base to do the same thing a month ago. It also front paged on Hackernews (http://www.earthbit.net ).

I guess the main difference is you're using your own proxy for the queries, which is sturdier than a third party. A worthwhile improvement as mine crashed under the load last time = )

askmike11• 12 years ago

Ah I knew I could not be the first one to come up with this idea. Nice to see an alternative as well! I love the sounds you added.

I like the fact that I provide all data for the website myself, though I'm not in a position to buy a lot of servers. So let's hope this one will hold :)

FYI: Your normal globe wasn't loading for me, I am seeing the same error that bothered my version as well. That is until @mrdoob pointed me to the error: https://twitter.com/mrdoob/status/429292386611511296

bachback• 12 years ago

merger? both are pretty damn cool.

siculars• 12 years ago

Right, so these are basically the ip addresses of the bitcoind nodes that are the entry point into the bitcoin network. They are not the addresses of the end users who are transacting in BTC. Correct?

mappum• 12 years ago

You are partly correct. The IP is the node who first told Blockchain.info (assuming that's what this is using) about the transaction. The "entry point" to the network would be when the person sending first transmits it.

There is no way to be sure where a transaction came from, but if you have data about how long it took to reach parts of the network, you can make an educated guess (which becomes more accurate if you have more connections/nodes).

Some people specifically add Blockchain.info to their peer list, but that is bad for anonymity since all your transactions will then list your real IP in the "relayed by" field.

bbosh3• 12 years ago

This is awesome, but just a small comment about "Next block expected in 7 minutes". The next expected block is always due in 10 minutes, no matter when the previous block was generated. Mining is a memoryless process.

kaoD5• 12 years ago

What do you mean? If blocks are 10min apart (actually less as the network hashrate grows before the difficulty adjustment) and the last block was found 3 minutes ago, a new block is expected to be found after 7 more minutes.

askmike11• 12 years ago

The 10 minutes is only an average time at which the network can solve the problem with random tries. You won't see a lot of blocks 10 minutes apart because only when measured over longer timeframes it averages to 10 minutes.

Just like when you flip 10 coins they likely won't result in: head - tail - head - tail - (...). Though on average you end up with 5 tails and 5 heads.

bbosh3• 12 years ago

Each hash is essentially an observation of a uniformly distributed variable (hopefully). When you flip a coin, it's heads with probability 1/2 and tails with probability 1/2. The fact that you flipped heads on the first go doesn't change the probabilities. In the same way, the fact that your hash didn't match the difficult on the first go, doesn't change the probability it will match the difficulty on future hashes. So each hash is independent of the attempts you've already made, so there's the same probability of a match at any time step.

askmike11• 12 years ago

You are right of course, a dice won't be estimated to roll on a 6 after it failed to do so 5 previous times.

I think the best solution is to remove the expected next block time counter altogether. One of the reasons UX wise I went for such an expected point in the future was that after reading it you are aware a new block will come again (just like when you first load the project) and that might keep you waiting for it.

kaoD5• 12 years ago

I think you've been misled and this is not a case of gambler's fallacy (I might be wrong). You should check my comment[1]. And please correct me if I'm wrong!

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7159663

yetfeo• 12 years ago

The next expected block is always due in 10 minutes

Not if the current network speed is higher than the difficulty level due to more mining power having come online since the last difficulty change.

You could estimate this by examining the block times over the last 120 (or some N) blocks, estimating the difficulty for that solve rate, and using the ratio of current network difficulty over the the estimated difficulty times 10 minutes.

BobMarin• 12 years ago

Actually the mining aspect of the Bitcoin protocol is ahead of schedule almost consistently and because of that the mean time is about 7 min

gluelogic• 12 years ago

I believe there is a typo. In the top left corner, it says 'Block mined at location: Unkown'. Shouldn't that be 'unknown'?

askmike11• 12 years ago

Thanks, fixed now!

jyz• 12 years ago

man I was going to start a visualization of blockchain but this is wayy cooler. KUDOS Mike!

askmike11• 12 years ago

thanks!

noir_lord• 12 years ago

I'm watching a real time 3D visualisation of the generation of a distributed unregulated worldwide crypto-currency using the largest network of computers the world has ever seen.

Screw it I'm off to the Black Sun for a drink and a sword fight.

Realtime Bitcoin webGL globe – visualizing all transactions and blocks

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