Visualizing The Bitcoin Blockchain And Catching Spammers
Do you want to know what the transactions look like happening in real time? This awesome app makes it easy.
Do you like visualizations?
I like visualizations. Especially blockchain related ones. They make my fingers sweaty and my spidey-sense go whack. Decentralized transaction visualizations...that's the good stuff.
I stumbled upon this app at dailyblockchain.github.io, which visualizes transactions happening on Bitcoin.
So what are we looking at here?
These are transactions that are submitted to the network and compete for being included in a block. The single blue dots represent a single transaction. The picture above shows normal single transactions as they fly in.
- Green = input
- Red = output
- Yellow = input+output
- Blue = transaction
- Line = transaction chain
Let's have a look at it up close:
You can navigate by using the mouse+scroll to zoom in and out and press SPACE to run or pause it.
What the hell are you talking about? Inputs? Outputs?
If you want to understand more about how Bitcoin transactions are structured, I invite you to read my previous article (Understanding Bitcoin Inputs and Outputs) that covers this in detail.
What does it look like when someone spams the network?
Watch the spectacle unfold:
1. Bubble forming.
2. Bubble bursting.
3. Let's look what kind of transactions these are.
4. One spammer up close.
5. Let's inspect it on the blockexplorer!
Gotcha!
624 Inputs on this transaction and one output amounting to 20 BTC. Super high transaction fee of 0.1 BTC. What? This transaction is still unconfirmed and in my understanding it never will be, since the applicant does not own the keys that can redeem all transaction inputs. And there are a lot of inputs that need to be verified in this transaction. By paying a high fee, the spammer is requesting priority processing from the miners for a transaction that will be rejected by the blockchain anyway, thus making everyone's actually valid transactions else wait -> clogging up the network.
To give credit where credit is due: The post was inspired by Shayan Eskandiri's Twitter post. The visualization is provided by https://dailyblockchain.github.io . If you think he did an awesome job at programming this, you consider supporting him by donating a few Satoshis :)
Head over to the website and check it out for yourself, it's fascinating :)
More Articles like this:
Do you want to learn about Bitcoin transaction Inputs and Outputs?(Read article)
Do you want to know how to protect Internet Freedom? (Read article)
- Nick ( @cryptonik ) -
I love the idea of visualizing the activity on the blockchain. This is a fascinating and beautiful topic.
I agree, it's magical!
This bot showed love to all the humans, now its your turn :]
<3
Are the spammers intentionally trying to clog the blockchain? That is the purpose?
Yes and No.
Since the invention of bots and automation scripts it is inevitable than ANY application and/or network will get spammed. 99,99% users may cooperate, but it takes 1 single person who programs a script that will execute 1000 requests/second automated and put the server under stress. It is unavoidable.
Therefore the developers have the challenge of developing systems that are robust against this. For example use servers with a robust CPUs and large RAM, use "Cloudflare" - A distributed mechanism that guarantees online availability even under severe stress and so on and so on.
Why spam? Usually some sort of financial gain. Execute an Ad click 1000 times x $0.001 = $1 Profit. Rinse and repeat.
On the blockchain: A few years back, when bitcoin blocks were empty and the fee was almost zero, somebody made the gambling game Satoshi Dice. Because the app became so popular, and transactions were free - the network was soon overwhelmed with transactions -> clogged.
Last month, Ethereum fans made a game called Cryptokitties. It became super popular and due to so many people breeding these cats, they clogged the Ethereum network.
Are these 2 games spam?
I argue - no. They are totally valid real life applications of the blockchain, and their effect points out limitations that our dear developers should improve upon.
Regarding this article. It's likely to be intentional and almost certainly an automated script. The goal? I cannot really tell, there are always assholes out there. On any given network there are hundreds of spam attacks every single day.
Molecular level on block chains. Pretty cool explanation on topic.
That's right! :)
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