Changelog / Release Notes

v3.4.0

2023-06-14

• Breaking changes to the API (see ./api/changelog)
• Homepage
  • New "Next Halving" widget in Network Summary
  • Show difficulty ATH comparison
  • Show "Next Block" fullness
  • Progress bar for difficulty adjustment estimate
  • Include median fee rate for next-block estimates (also on /next-block)
  • Show a banner if 'today' is a Bitcoin 'Holiday' (see more below)
• Minor fixes for running against Bitcoin Core v23
• Block Analysis: include top "days destroyed" transactions
• URL change: /mining-template -> /next-block (redirect is included for compatibility)
• On Extended PubKey pages, include balance data for various address (if Electrum server is configured)
• New /next-halving tool
• Several new API actions/changes; see /api/changelog
• New /holidays, a curated list of Bitcoin 'Holidays'
• Support for different view options on /fun
• On /difficulty-history, make delta graph honor timespan filtering
• Proper use of production-ready MemoryStore for session data
• Support for serving static assets via a configurable CDN
• Misc fixes for erroneous data display on non-mainnet nodes
• Switch from fontawesome to bootstrap-icons v1.8.0
• Refreshed miner-identification database
• Refreshed "Dark" theme with blues toned down (legacy dark theme still available)
• UI/UX tweaks
• Misc minor fixes
• Updated dependencies

v3.3.0

2021-12-07

• New tool for viewing the UTXO Set: /utxo-set
• New API actions:
  • /api/blockchain/utxo-set
  • /api/address/yourAddress
  • /api/mining/next-block
  • /api/mining/next-block/txids
  • /api/mining/next-block/includes/:txid
  • /api/mining/miner-summary
• Major fixes for data displayed in /tx-stats tool
• Updated miners, including identification of "Patoshi"-pattern blocks
• /node-details: Include coinstatsindex status
• Support querying UTXO Set even with slowDeviceMode=true, iff coinstatsindex is available
• Fix for difficulty adjustment estimate
• /difficulty-history: Support for viewing different time ranges
• When viewing unconfirmed transaction details, show an info dialog if the transaction is predicted to be confirmed in the next block
• Performance improvements
  • Fix for performance degradation over time due to slow "estimatedSupply" function
  • Homepage speedup by making "Estimated Next Block" data load asynchonously
  • Caching for /difficulty-history data
• Unicode formatting for OP_RETURN and other similar data (with ascii+hex accessible via toggle)
• New .env options for setting defaults (see .env-sample for details):
  • BTCEXP_DISPLAY_CURRENCY (btc,sat,local)
  • BTCEXP_LOCAL_CURRENCY (usd,eur,gbp)
  • BTCEXP_UI_TIMEZONE (utc,local)
  • BTCEXP_UI_HIDE_INFO_PANELS (true,false)
• Support for displaying timestamps in local timezone (by using browser default, or setting a manual offset)
• Cleanup treatment of locktime on transaction details pages
• Unique favicon color based on the active network (mainnet=orange, testnet=green, signet=magenta, regtest=gray)
• Lots of minor styling improvements
• Error handling improvements
• Fix for /api/quotes/all
• Fix for incorrect date on "Diario El Salvador..." fun item (thanks @Dirkson643)
• New Fun items related to Taproot activation
• Performance log admin page at /admin/perf-log
• Updated dependencies

v3.2.0

2021-08-10

• Public API! See the docs at /api/docs (thanks @pointbiz)
• XPUB pages: search for any xpub (ypub, zpub, etc) and see summary details and a list of associated addresses (thanks @pointbiz)
• Homepage: add "Predicted Next Block" section
• Mempool Summary: add top-fee transactions table
• Improvements to transaction details UI, especially on smaller screens
• Cleanup support for Taproot/bech32m
• New /mining-template tool, showing structured output of getblocktemplate command
• Various improvements to charts and graphs throughout the tool (including lots of y-axis changes: linear->log)
• Better support for BIP9 soft forks shown on /node-details (e.g. Taproot ST in 0.21.1) (Thanks @Pantamis)
• New "Recent" and "Favorites" sections on /rpc-browser
• Block lists: show (min, avg, max) fee rates instead of just avg
• Random Bitcoin-related quote shown in footer on each page load
• New /quotes, curated list of Bitcoin-related quotes (each quote also having its own page like this)
• Preemptive support for upcoming format change to getrawtransaction output (thanks @xanoni)
• Fix for incorrect homepage block count when using BTCEXP_UI_HOME_PAGE_LATEST_BLOCKS_COUNT
• Fix for inaccurate difficulty adjustment estimates
• Link to Tor v3 Hidden Service in footer
• Fix for DEBUG environment variable being ignored
• Fix for /rpc-terminal not parsing non-int parameters properly
• Fix for edge case where txindex availability check fails at startup (add retries with exp. backoff)
• Fix for tiny-value display (i.e. 1e-8 -> 0.00000001)
• Misc UI/UX tweaks
• Cache busting for frontend resources
• Improved error handling in many places
• Updated dependencies

v3.1.1

2021-04-20

• Fix SSO flow broken by v3.0.0 update
• Fix for regtest network errors on homepage
• Fix for server errors in Docker-based installs

v3.1.0

2021-04-14

• Improvements to no-txindex support: now available for all versions of Bitcoin Core
• Move public sites to BitcoinExplorer.org (BIG thanks @SatoshisDomains)
• Add back the /peers tool in the "Tools" menu
  • Note: The map on the peers tool now requires users set their own BTCEXP_MAPBOX_APIKEY in .env
• Response compression
• Remove reference to unused fonts.css
• Increased static-files cache: 1hr -> 1mo
• Clearer UX around RPC connection failures (show the fact clearly, instead of flooding the log with cryptic errors)
• Fixed changelog for v3.0.0 release (added/clarified some issues)
• Updated favicons (Thanks realfavicongenerator.net)
• Fix for homepage error after failure to get AU exchange rate
• UX improvements on /peers page
• Graphs for top items in /admin/stats
• Optional support for plausible.io analytics
• Fix to avoid displaying empty "Summary" section when we fail to get address txid list
• UX improvement around electrs too-many-txs-for-address errors

v3.0.0

2021-04-08

• Major visual refresh!
  • All new design (layout, fonts, colors, etc)
  • Redesigned Dark Mode (now the default)
  • New app icon
• Support for pruned nodes and nodes with disabled txindex! (HUGE Thanks to @shesek)
  • Note: Currently only Bitcoin Core versions 0.21+ are able to support this feature (a future improvement is planned to make it available to all versions)
• Mempool Summary improvements
  • Greatly improved performance for multiple loads via caching
  • Added: "Blocks Count" column by fee-rate bucket
  • Tool for estimating Block Depth of a transaction or a fee rate (Thanks @pointbiz)
• Mining Summary: added doughnut chart for rev. breakdown, simplified table data
• Upgraded to Bootstrap 5 (currently beta3...)
• Update mapbox API (Thanks @shesek)
  • Note: The map on the /peers page now requires that users set the env var BTCEXP_MAPBOX_APIKEY to their own API key
• Fix for 404 pages hanging (Thanks @shesek)
• Add convenience redirect for baseUrl (Thanks @shesek)
• Make url in logs clickable (Thanks @shesek)
• Caching for static files (maxAge=1hr)
• Frontend performance optimizations
• Smarter performance/memory defaults for slow devices
• Major refactoring, modernization, and code-reuse improvements
• UX improvements and polish throughout
• URL changes
  • /node-status -> /node-details
  • /unconfirmed-tx -> /mempool-transactions
• Environment variable changes
  • The below changes were made to more clearly acknowledge that multiple Electrum-protocol implementations (e.g. ElectrumX, Electrs) can be used for address queries:
  • BTCEXP_ADDRESS_API value electrumx -> electrum (electrumx should still works)
  • BTCEXP_ELECTRUMX_SERVERS -> BTCEXP_ELECTRUM_SERVERS (BTCEXP_ELECTRUMX_SERVERS should still work)
• Updated dependencies
  • jQuery: v3.4.1 -> v3.6.0
  • highlight.js: v9.14.2 -> v10.7.1
  • fontawesome: v5.7.1 -> v5.15.3

v2.2.0

2021-01-22

• New "Fun" item for the tx containing the whitepaper and new tool to extract the whitepaper and display it
• New fee rate data on /block-analysis pages
• New minor misc peer data available in Bitcoin Core RPC v0.21+
• New gold exchange rate on homepage
• Fix for SSO token generation URL encoding (Thanks @shesek and @Kixunil)
• Fix for /peers map
• Fix for README git clone instructions (Thanks @jonasschnelli)

v2.1.0

2020-12-15

• Support for running on a configurable BASEURL, e.g. "/explorer/" (Thanks @ketominer, @Kixunil, @shesek)
• Support for SSO (Thanks @Kixunil)
• Support for signet and taproot (Thanks @guggero)
• Support for listening on 0.0.0.0 (Thanks @lukechilds)
• Support for viewing list of block heights for each miner on /mining-summary
• Sanitizing of environment variables (Thanks @lukechilds)
• Fix for XSS vulnerabilities (Thanks @shesek)
• Fix for low severity lodash dependency vulnerability (Thanks @abhiShandy)
• Fix for zero block reward (eventually on mainnet, now on regtest) (Thanks @MyNameIsOka)
• Fix for cryptic error when running regtest with no blocks
• Fix for pagination errors on /blocks (not displaying genesis block on the last page; error on last page when sort=asc)
• Electrum connect/disconnect stats on /admin
• Add P2SH bounty address /fun items (Thanks @cd2357)
• Misc cleanup (Thanks @AaronDewes)
• Add "Thanks" notes to changelog

v2.0.2

2020-07-03

• Lots of improvements to connect/disconnect/error management with configured Electrum servers
• Include pending balance for addresses queried via ElectrumX, when available
• Include basic stats for Electrum queries on /admin
• Bug fixes
  • Fix for erroneous defaults for boolean env vars in some scenarios (slow device mode)
• Updated dependences and mining pools
• Misc cleanup (Thanks @JosephGoulden)

v2.0.1

2020-05-28

• Highlight coinbase spends in transaction I/O details
• Highlight very old UTXOs (5+ years) in transaction I/O details
• Transaction page: show "days destroyed"
• Bug fixes
  • Fix for "verifymessage" in RPC browser accepting multi-line messages
  • Fix to make "--slow-device-mode=false" work
  • Don't show errors on address page for bech32 due to trying to parse as base58
  • Fix "failure to render homepage when fee estimates are unavailable"
• Minor additions to "fun" data
• Updated dependences

v2.0.0

2020-03-25

• New data points in homepage "Network Summary":
  • Fee estimates (estimatesmartfee) for 1, 6, 144, 1008 blocks
  • Hashrate estimate for 1+7 days
  • New item for 'Chain Rewrite Days', using 7day hashrate
  • New data based on UTXO-set summary. Note that UTXO-set querying is resource intensive and therefore disabled by default to protect slower nodes. Set BTCEXP_SLOW_DEVICE_MODE to false in your .env file to enjoy associated features:
    • UTXO-set size
    • Total coins in circulation
    • Market cap
  • 24-hour network volume (sum of tx outputs). This value is calculated at app launch and refreshed every 30min.
  • Avg block time for current difficulty epoch with estimate of next difficulty adjustment
• Tweaks to data in blocks lists:
  • Simpler timestamp formatting for easy reading
  • Include "Time-to-Mine" (TTM) for each block (with green/red highlighting for "fast"/"slow" (<5min / >15min) blocks)
  • Display average fee in sat/vB
  • Add total fees
  • Add output volume (if getblockstats rpc call is supported, i.e. 0.17.0+)
  • Show %Full instead of weight/size
• Block Detail page improvements
  • New data in "Summary" on Block pages (supported for bitcoind v0.17.0+)
    • Outputs total volume
    • Input / Output counts
    • UTXO count change
    • Min / Max tx sizes
  • New "Fees Summary" section (bitcoind v0.17.0+)
    • Fee rate percentiles
    • Fee rates: min, avg, max
    • Fee totals: min, avg, max
  • New "Technical Details" section. Items from "Summary" in previous versions have been moved here. This section is collapsible if desired.
• Improvements to transaction input/output displays
  • Change primary input data to be tx outpoint ("txid #voutIndex")
  • Zero-indexing for tx inputs/outputs (#173)
  • Labels for transaction input/output types
  • Inputs: when available, show "input address" below tx outpoint
  • Coinbase and OP_RETURN items: show ascii data inline with link to show hex data
• New tool /block-stats for viewing summarized block data from recent blocks
• New tool /mining-summary for viewing summarized mining data from recent blocks
• New tool /block-analysis for analyzing the details of transactions in a block.
  • IMPORTANT: Use of /block-analysis can put heavy memory pressure on this app, depending on the details of the block being analyzed. If your app is crashing, consider setting a higher memory ceiling: node --max_old_space_size=XXX bin/www (where XXX is measured in MB).
• New tool /difficulty-history showing a graph of the history of all difficulty adjustments
• Change /mempool-summary to load data via ajax (UX improvement to give feedback while loading large data sets)
• Zero-indexing for tx index-in-block values
• Reduced memory usage
• Versioning for cache keys if using persistent cache (redis)
• Configurable UI "sub-header" links
• Start of RPC API versioning support
• Tweaked styling across site
• Homepage UI tweaks
  • Remove "Bitcoin Explorer" H1 (it's redundant)
  • Hide the "Date" (timestamp) column for recent blocks (the Age+TTM is more valuable)
• Updated miner configs
• Lots of minor bug fixes

v1.1.9

2020-02-23

• Fix for unescaped user search query display (#183)
• More detailed network info on /node-status
• Updated bootstrap, jquery
• Disable stacktrace log output by default (#170)
• Updated miner configs

v1.1.8

2020-01-09

• Fix for missing changelog file when installed via npm
• Updated miner configs

v1.1.5

2019-12-22

• Fix startup issues when connecting to a node that's not ready to serve data (e.g. verifying blocks)
• Homepage header: show exchange rate in selected currency (rather than hardcoded USD)
• Homepage header: show sat/USD or sat/EUR

v1.1.4

2019-12-04

• First-class support for testnet/regtest

v1.1.3

2019-12-02

• Fixes related to running bitcoind 0.19.0.1
• Updated dependencies
• Version number in footer
• /changelog linked in footer

v1.1.2

2019-10-17

• Add back map on /peers that was lost with recent bug

v1.1.1

2019-10-01

• Add new default blacklist items for some 'hidden' RPCs
• Print app version info to log on startup
• Remove LTC site from footer

v1.1.0

2019-09-30

• Show spent/unspent status on tx detail pages
• Show mempool ancestor/descendant txs on tx detail pages
• Blacklist 'createwallet' by default
• Show RBF status for unconfirmed txs
• Faster, more reliable display of /mempool-summary and /mempool-transactions pages
• Fix for persisting arg values in UI on /rpc-browser
• Misc minor fixes and ux tweaks

v1.0.3

2019-04-27

• Pluggable address API supporting different implementations
• Logging improvements
• Fix to avoid caching unconfirmed txs
• Identify destroyed fees
• Misc minor fixes and ux tweaks

v1.0.2

2019-03-13

• Fix for background color on light theme

v1.0.1

2019-03-13

• Dark theme
• Tx rate graph on homepage
• Improved caching
• Misc minor fixes and ux tweaks

v1.0.0

2019-02-23

• Initial release