Genesis

A Bitcoin SV Exclusive BitDB node

_unwriter
3 min readJan 14, 2019

Today I present Genesis BitDB, a Bitcoin SV exclusive BitDB node.

But first, if you aren’t aware of what BitDB is, check out the website to learn more about how BitDB works:

Also, before we go in, I would like to emphasize that nothing has changed to the existing BitDB nodes, including both bitdb.network and bitgraph.network nodes.

Genesis is a new addition.

1. What is Genesis?

Genesis is a new, special BitDB node that runs on Bitcoin SV. Here’s what its explorer looks like:

And here are the highlights:

  1. Works exactly the same as the other BitDB nodes (same Bitquery syntax), with only one difference:
  2. Uses Bitcoin ORIGINAL address format instead of Cash Address.
  3. Completely new architecture behind the scenes, based on lessons learned from several stress tests, soon to be open sourced.

2. How to use

All you need to remember when using the Genesis BitDB is:

Use the Bitcoin original address format in all queries, instead of the cash address format from Bitcoin cash.

And that’s it! Everything else is the same as other BitDB nodes.

Except…

3. API Endpoint

It’s a new node so of course it has a different URL.

Before

Previously, all API endpoints looked like:

https://bitgraph.network/q/[BASE64_ENCODED_BITQUERY_STRING]

After

With Genesis, the new API endpoint looks like:

https://genesis.bitdb.network/q/1FnauZ9aUH2Bex6JzdcV4eNX7oLSSEbxtN/[BASE64_ENCODED_BITQUERY_STRING]

The path pattern looks a bit different, but just go with it. You’ll find out why sometime in the near future.

4. Try It Today!

GENESIS is beta but I encourage every Bitcoin SV developer to start using it instead of the bitgraph.network node because:

  1. Most Bitcoin SV wallets are using the original Bitcoin address format, so querying by cash address will increasingly not make sense for Bitcoin SV applications.
  2. Genesis was built with a new architecture based on lessons learned from various stress tests so it’s supposed to be more performant. (Soon to be open sourced)

That said, this doesn’t change anything about the existing nodes. I am dedicated to keep running all existing nodes. In fact, I updated the bitdb website dashboard to let you easily switch between multiple nodes, as seen below:

To try Genesis, just go to the dashboard:

and click the “SV Genesis” button to get the code, and you’re good to go.

Have fun!

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