BitIodine – Get more from the blockchain | Hacker News Reader

BitIodine – Get more from the blockchain

bitiodine.net

58 pointsmoonlander32 comments

Great Idea. Unfortunately, the server seems to be unable to handle the load.

Backend is up again, sorry :) .

This is some great work! As part of a school assignment a few years ago, we just barely scratched the surface of block chain analysis [1]. We stopped at loading the block chain into Neo4j, scraping public internet forums for donation accounts, and making simple visualizations. It's cool to see the idea taken so far.

[1] https://plus.google.com/109389788036578433900/posts/hvhwFcp3...

I wish I had seen this earlier! :) Thank you!

Apparently chemistry names are the new hot trend for startups. This is the third on HN within the last week. It's a pretty good idea though because the names sound like what they do; naptha makes sense as the name for an image extractor since naphtha is used for doing quick and dirty extractions while making drugs, iodine makes sense here because it's used to bring out more detail in samples when doing microscopy, etc.

I assumed it was named after Iodine[1] -the TCP over DNS method used for (eg) breaking out of restrictive wifi.

The atomic number of Iodine is 53, which is also the port DNS runs over -hence the original projects naming.

[1] http://code.kryo.se/iodine/

edit: I realise it is not a and apologise for the noise (though iodine is cool too).

Except if your target customer isn't a chemist.

It could potentially increase awareness of chemistry, the dangers of dihydrogen monoxyide not withstanding.

I believe the word that OP was looking for in his title was "block chain". Not "blockchain".

Blockchain is the company name of one of your competitors.

One of the speakers at the Toronto Bitcoin Expo corrected his own slide during his own company's presentation concerning this matter. It was quite comical.

Unfortunately quite fuzzy due to that ridiculous website. I wish they hadn't done that.

And I wish I was the guy who first thought to buy blockchain.com back on March 8th, 2011.

It was certainly a wise business move.

I wouldn't bother correcting it. It's that company's own fault for using such an unimaginative name.

It's proper grammar. Blockchain is not a word according to any dictionaries that I know of.

Give it five years; it's a perfectly cromulent word.

Blockchain is how the community has spelt it for quite a while now. You're never going to get them to stop doing that.

https://blockchain.com/ and https://blockchain.info/ seem to be different companies

They're the same company.

Thank you extrapolate and ajaimk! Yes, the backend is suffering a bit - but it will be back in a few minutes.

This is just a very limited demo of what BitIodine can do! For more info click on "About" or wait till new features ("Get insights") make it to the web interface.

Do you store the block chain in a SQL database as well as neo4j? If so, what SQL database are you using? I've written a tool that stores the block chain in PostgreSQL but INSERTs are getting a bit slow due to indexes. Maybe we could share notes...

I am using SQLite (yeah) for blockchain data and the C++ LEMON library for in-memory graph operations. Every module is able to update incrementally.

Very interesting work. I might suggest you remove the `target="_blank"` from the links — if people want new tabs they can do so quite easily.

You're right, done except for the footer! Thanks for your input!

Neat tool. I think it could definitely be enhanced with some visuals though, maybe on the cluster page you could graph related addresses or something.

Very cool. Are you able to compute the shortest paths on fly?

Yes, computation is done in memory and is reasonably fast, with some clever caching. Right now the backend server is overloaded - I am working on it and you will be able to try it with custom addresses very soon.

The terms on your website don't really mesh with the actual behavior of the blockchain. There is no "from" address, there is never a "from" address.

In this context, I believe the "from" address would be TxOuts which use a pay-to-pubkeyhash script.

That's not "from" an address though.

Why not? TxOuts are spent when creating new transactions, hence the "from".

"From" implies to users that every previous output is owned by a person, is controlled by a person, or is even an address. None of these are always true (though they usually are), which leads to disasters like people sending "refunds" to shared addresses. It's not a concept in the reference client and should be avoided to prevent more confusion than blockchain.info has already caused.

If I spend a script with no hash160/p2sh address, where is it "from"?

Ah, I see your point now. I agree it can be confusing to a non technical audience but presumably, this tool is for people who have prior knowledge on how the block chain works.

It's probably best to avoid using the term anyway. Blockchain.info should really only be a technical tool but non-technical people seem to insist on using it and misunderstanding it.

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