Published on: 2014-02-16T14:49:40+00:00
MatÃas Alejo Garcia, a developer for BitPay, has invited people to contribute to the GitHub page for Bitcore and Insight. Insight is a software package that can be downloaded, installed, and used alongside a trusted bitcoind instance. It offers blockchain query capabilities through its REST/Websockets API, which is explained in the Readme document. The demo installations of live.bitcore.io and test.bitcore.io are just for demonstration purposes.Melvin Carvalho has shared information about a free software testnet explorer called test.bitcore.io, which is based on javascript/node. He also mentioned his work on a testnet explorer and the possibility of adding semantic web style markup attributes to the HTML. There is also an API for the testnet block explorer provided by biteasy.com at https://www.biteasy.com/testnet/blocks.On December 27th, 2013, Mike Hearn posted on the Bitcoin-development mailing list about the lack of a reliable testnet block explorer. He mentioned that the original blockexplorer.com was often broken, slow, and not maintained anymore. However, he provided an alternative, a new block explorer called Biteasy, which also had a REST/JSON API. Hearn noted that the coinbase transaction may not necessarily come first in the listing due to it being sorted by "time received". The Biteasy site was built using bitcoinj, and the author could be contacted on IRC with the nick damethos. Hearn also shared information on other testnet explorers such as test.bitcore.io and mentioned his plan to fork the Bitcore explorer to add semantic web style markup attributes to the HTML. He also mentioned that blockr.io planned to add testnet but could not provide an estimate on when it would happen.Eric Lombrozo has created a shell around the bitcoind JSON-RPC, along with a websockets server that provides real-time transaction and block feeds. This shell can be used with bitcoin mainnet, testnet, and alt chains. The layout of the shell is similar to blockchain.info with a bootstrap look-and-feel. Lombrozo apologized for using the css from Ben's site and offered to collaborate with anyone who could help make the styling original. However, the JSON-RPC is missing address indexing and an "unspent" API.There are other testnet explorers mentioned by Melvin Carvalho, such as http://testnet.btclook.com/ and http://test.webbtc.com/. However, these explorers are not fully functional for creating transactions due to the lack of an "unspent" API. Mike Hearn also mentioned the new block explorer at https://www.biteasy.com/testnet/blocks, which is built using bitcoinj and has a REST/JSON API. He noted that the coinbase tx may not come first in the listing as it's sorted by "time received".In summary, there are several options available for testnet block explorers. The original blockexplorer.com is often broken, slow, and not maintained anymore. However, alternatives like Biteasy and test.bitcore.io offer reliable options with REST/JSON APIs. Additionally, Eric Lombrozo has created a shell around the bitcoind JSON-RPC that provides real-time transaction and block feeds. While there are some limitations, such as missing address indexing and an "unspent" API, these explorers provide valuable tools for exploring the testnet.
Updated on: 2023-08-01T07:06:39.687518+00:00