Show HN: Post Bitcoin transactions in one page of JS code

#1

Post by CatheryneN » Mon, Apr 28, 2014, 8:14 PM UTC

Show HN: Post Bitcoin transactions in one page of JS code
dev.blockcypher.com

Re: Show HN: Post Bitcoin transactions in one page of JS code

#2

Post by mriou » Mon, Apr 28, 2014, 8:24 PM UTC

The full API documentation can be found there:

http://dev.blockcypher.com/

Includes websockets and webhooks to get notified on a variety of blockchain events.

Re: Show HN: Post Bitcoin transactions in one page of JS code

#3

Post by alexism » Mon, Apr 28, 2014, 8:27 PM UTC

so you guys are giving free coins? cool! ;) nice api!

Re: Show HN: Post Bitcoin transactions in one page of JS code

#4

Post by wmf » Mon, Apr 28, 2014, 8:27 PM UTC

Using a remote server to build the transaction and then signing it locally seems pretty cumbersome.

Re: Show HN: Post Bitcoin transactions in one page of JS code

#5

Post by mriou » Mon, Apr 28, 2014, 8:36 PM UTC

wmf wrote: post #4

Using a remote server to build the transaction and then signing it locally seems pretty cumbersome.

It's much simpler than it sounds, only 7 lines of code in the sample posted. The point is that most people don't want to share their private key or their users' private keys, justifiably so.

The alternative is building the full binary transaction on your end, which involves selecting inputs, generating scripts, worrying about fees, etc. Implementing that is a week's project. Using an API is 5 min.

Re: Show HN: Post Bitcoin transactions in one page of JS code

#6

Post by wmf » Mon, Apr 28, 2014, 9:05 PM UTC

mriou wrote: post #5

wmf wrote: post #4

Using a remote server to build the transaction and then signing it locally seems pretty cumbersome.

It's much simpler than it sounds, only 7 lines of code in the sample posted. The point is that most people don't want to share their private key or their users' private keys, justifiably so. The alternative is building the full binary transaction on your end, which involves selecting inputs, generating scripts, worrying about fees, etc. Implementing that is a week's project. Using an API is 5 min.

The alternative is building the full binary transaction on your end, which involves selecting inputs, generating scripts, worrying about fees, etc. Implementing that is a week's project.

Hasn't BitCore already done that?

Re: Show HN: Post Bitcoin transactions in one page of JS code

#7

Post by mriou » Mon, Apr 28, 2014, 10:42 PM UTC

wmf wrote: post #6

mriou wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's much simpler than it sounds, only 7 lines of code in the sample posted. The point is that most people don't want to share their private key or their users' private keys, justifiably so. The alternative is building the full binary transaction on your end, which involves selecting inputs, generating scripts, worrying about fees, etc. Implementing that is a week's project. Using an API is 5 min.

The alternative is building the full binary transaction on your end, which involves selecting inputs, generating scripts, worrying about fees, etc. Implementing that is a week's project. Hasn't BitCore already done that?

They have. But only if you're on node.js and you need to run bitcoind yourself. Which means maintaining it, backups, restart scripts, etc. Building the transaction using BitCore isn't really simpler either (see the sample https://github.com/bitpay/bitcore/blob/master/examples/Creat...).

So using BlockCypher's API to do that is much more portable (you have ECDSA signature libs in most PLs) and avoids all the hassles of additional infrastructure.

Re: Show HN: Post Bitcoin transactions in one page of JS code

#8

Post by CatheryneN » Mon, Apr 28, 2014, 11:02 PM UTC

alexism wrote: post #3

so you guys are giving free coins? cool! ;) nice api!

Thanks! Yes, for test =). At the BoostVC Hackathon yesterday, the team that won, CoinViz, used one of our APIs to do a visual representation of the blockchain: 110k requests in 5hrs and our infrastructure was still bored.