In the latest kdb+ technical white paper Jeremy Lucid and Daniel Irwin look at blockchain explorer technology, which provides a convenient means for users to monitor their cryptocurrency transactions and funds, and can be used to provide broader insightful metrics on the overall state of a network, such as the number of transactions occurring per block, the number of unique/active addresses, the volumes of currency being transacted and the mining hash rate, to mention a few.
Their paper gives a brief overview of the blockchain database structure and the steps required to install and run a Bitcoin full node, with examples. It also looks at how a simple blockchain explorer can be constructed using kdb+ to efficiently store and query over nine years’ worth of Bitcoin transactions, consisting of over half a million validated blocks, while making use of native performance enhancing techniques such as partitioned databases, splayed tables, intraday write downs, in-memory table joins, on-disk and in-memory attributes, and optimally structured queries.
If you would like to read more, the full article is on the KX Developer’s site here.
If you would like to read more articles by Jeremy Lucid, follow the links below:
- Securing digital assets – a Bitcoin full node API for kdb+ | 31 October 2018
- Kdb+ and Factom: Securing data on the blockchain with qfactom | 13 September 2017
- C API, C programming language, interfaces to kdb+ | 20 July 2017
Jeremy Lucid is a kdb+ consultant based in Belfast. He has worked on real-time best execution projects for a major multinational banking institution, and on a KX for Surveillance implementation at a leading options and futures exchange.
Daniel Irwin is a kdb+ consultant based in Singapore. He worked on a global cross asset KX for Surveillance implementation for a major international banking group before moving to one of Asia’s largest sovereign wealth funds to develop a solution for best execution and transaction cost analysis.
