I have been building a bitcoin block explorer and I feel it's good enough to show:
The site runs its own hardware, bitcoin node and address index. No third-party blockchain API used.
Inside the site:
- Explorer: blocks, transactions and addresses at root-level URLs. (very important, a feature I always wanted with other explorers, a quick easy way to query an address) For example you can type openbitcoin.com/block_number_here or openbitcoin.com/txid_here or openbitcoin.com/address_here to load the page instantly without visiting the site to use the search bar :)
- Node census (openbitcoin.com/nodes): reachable nodes counted by my own P2P crawler, 8,958 nodes from 92 countries last run.
- Rich list (openbitcoin.com/rich-list): top 10,000 addresses and balance distributions.
- Prices: spot price as a median of three exchanges, with a quick conversion tool on the front page.
- Tools: fee calculator, address validator, message verifier, QR generator, and key tools built to be downloaded and run offline.
- Guides: on confirmations, UTXOs, self-custody, stuck transactions and more. Newbie friendly.
- Games (openbitcoin.com/games): three arcade games built on real bitcoin mechanics, stack blocks, clear a mempool backlog, and a slot machine that plays the actual odds of guessing a private key.
The website is open source. What stays private is my server's operational layer.
Would appreciate any feedback, happy to contribute to the community.
another soulless website, just what the whole bitcoin community wanted!
Vibecoded UI!!
Really nice site! Clean, simple, and packed with useful Bitcoin tools.
The gift card section is interesting. How did you assemble it?
Also the impossible slot machine is cool:
they're just links to other websites, this is a fully vibe coded product
Thanks for the feedback! The gift cards are mirrors from two websites, Bitrefill and CoinCards, all of those link out to either or. It's a nice way to see what's available without leaving the site until you're ready to purchase.
This post has been downzapped 35000 sats.
Why? Who?
Probably chainalysis and the kyc crew. The idea that blockchain data might be harder to surveil is bad to them.
Thanks for pointing that out @Signal312, I am brand new here and just learning how things work, I definitely noticed my post was falling off the front page abruptly.
After scanning the front page I assumed it was ok to keep zapping my post up, is that not the case? Wasabi Wallet is doing exactly this without being downzapped for it. Their post from July 24th is still going strong.
Downzapping is a very controversial topic. It's been used heavily to censor political opinions (mostly anti-Iran war) that certain people don't agree with. (#1480182)
It's why I don't put a lot of effort into Stacker News anymore. It's just not worth it, what with somebody not liking your post, and - no explanation, no discussion - downzapping it into oblivion. All anonymous, and then your post disappears.
I've suggested that the default option for people on stacker news is that the main feed NOT take anonymous downzaps into account.
I don't know if that's the best answer, but there definitely needs to be an open discussion on this topic.
what a cool stuff! Thx for sharing
in halving countdown page, using mobile version, information is hide until I scroll sideways.
Hi @Fenix thanks for pointing that out, fix complete. Please refresh.
This is great! 👏👏👏
Thanks @satoshiplanet appreciate it!
keep building :)
Looks cool!
Thank you @Coinsreporter !
thanks for sharing, keep building!!!
Will do :)
Really cool and well put together, very smooth site, ux is smooth and well laid out
Like the interactive way of clicking txs as they come in
Lots of educational material to choose from
A lot of work went in to that, congratulations hope it gets seen 👏
Thanks for the kind feedback @npub1zapsats, yes spent quite a bit of time putting it together, I hope people can find it helpful.
I dug through the repo after seeing this. Nice work.
I especially like that the chain data comes from your own Bitcoin Core node, the API is documented, and the offline key tools are actually designed to run with no network access.
One thing I'm curious about: the Astro frontend builds locally, but the live explorer routes still expect a loopback data service that isn't included in the main repo.
Any plans for a minimal self-hostable data adapter that talks directly to Bitcoin Core + address-index? That could turn OpenBitcoin into a really nice private local explorer too.
Thanks for the kind words @SkyLords
This is done: https://github.com/openbitcoincom/explorer-adapter
Core alone gets you blocks, txs, mempool and fees. Add an electrum server (electrs or Fulcrum) for address pages, and the address-index for heavy-address caching. Same response shapes as the live site, so the public frontend plugs straight in.
Good idea!
I just went through the repo. I like that Bitcoin Core is enough to run the basic explorer, while Electrum and the address index can be added only when those extra features are needed.
The fallback for address totals is a nice touch too: correct but slower without the index, rather than simply unavailable.
This is pretty close to what I had in mind. Nice to see the idea turn into actual code so quickly. 👍
This is actually really cool running your own node and index instead of relying on third party APIs makes it much more trustworthy the simple root level URLs are a great touch too.
The self-hosted indexing is probably the strongest part of this project. Not relying on third-party blockchain APIs makes the explorer much more aligned with Bitcoin’s trust-minimized philosophy. One thing I’d love to see is a small “data transparency” page showing exactly where each metric comes from and how frequently it is updated, that could make the project stand out even more.
I love this, it is very easy to understand and the website layout is clear and concise. Keep it up, will definitely be sharing this with some people wanting to know more about bitcoin.
Great Job on the website, I'm definitely going to bookmark