Wild Explorer
A bitcoin block explorer built on top of my node_faker project
What is this?
It’s a block explorer, but instead of relying on a single node as a backend, it uses my node_faker project. This means electrum relays are picked at random and data about the blockchain is sourced from them.
How can I try it?
Just click here and follow the instructions: https://supertestnet.github.io/wild_explorer
Video explainer
Why did you make this?
First I made node_faker, which pretends to be a bitcoin node by emulating bitcoind’s api, but getting the data from electrum servers. Then I tried various apps against it, among whic…
Wild Explorer
A bitcoin block explorer built on top of my node_faker project
What is this?
It’s a block explorer, but instead of relying on a single node as a backend, it uses my node_faker project. This means electrum relays are picked at random and data about the blockchain is sourced from them.
How can I try it?
Just click here and follow the instructions: https://supertestnet.github.io/wild_explorer
Video explainer
Why did you make this?
First I made node_faker, which pretends to be a bitcoin node by emulating bitcoind’s api, but getting the data from electrum servers. Then I tried various apps against it, among which were LND – which worked, albeit slowly – and btc-rpc-explorer – which did not work.
I’m not exactly sure why btc-rpc-explorer did not work, but instead of debugging it, I just decided to implement my own block explorer. Luckily, I already had one for my testnet_generator project, so I repurposed that to work with the "real" blockchain, after accounting for the limitations of node_faker’s API. And voila! Wild Explorer was born.
Why is it so slow?
Because its backend is a bitcoind emulator written in javascript, and such a tool is bonkers, and definitely NOT optimized for a job like running a block explorer. But it technically works! So I’m excited.