Show HN: A Living Ledger – Visualization of the Ripple Network in Real-Time

Show HN: A Living Ledger – Visualization of the Ripple Network in Real-Time(alivingledger.com)

4 points by free-trampolin 8 years ago | 5 comments

Creator here. I created this app to visualize what is going on on the Ripple Network (kind of a blockchain, called 'ledger') in real-time. The application is written in Elixir/JavaScript, the client uses SVG (d3.js) and mostly css-transitions for visualization. Data is fetched from a public ripple validator using web-sockets, pre-processed server-side and finally broadcasted to the clients.

What you see, are validated transactions (TXs) between addresses. A TX always contains at least one address but can contain multiple (e.g. payment targets, but many more). These TX are not necessarily connected the XRP crypto-asset. The Ripple Network can be used without an asset as a messaging platform.

Check it out and enjoy. You can btw click on nodes to explore them. If you have any feedback or suggestions feel free to comment!

nowarninglabel 8 years ago | |

Neat. What were some reasons why you chose Elixir to write it in?

free-trampolin 8 years ago | | |

Thank you very much. The first reason is that I program exclusively using functional programming. That said, the choice is somehow limited. I have very good experiences with Elixir. Statelessly streaming uncritical data to a client is a perfect fit for Erlang's/Elixir's "let-it-fail"-paradigm. If the web-socket crashes server-side just let the supervisor respawn it one-for-one, there is no permanent state. I hope that makes sense.

pollyannas 8 years ago |

Some time ago I had to look for details on a transaction I did on Ripple and couldn't find a simple website that took a transaction id and showed me details on that transaction. Why is that?

I see you're linking to Bithomp here, and that's what I found, the only one, but still it wasn't sufficient. Bithomp is confusing and doesn't show all information, just a quick (and confusing) summary.

free-trampolin 8 years ago | |

Yes bithomp has not necessarily the best interface. Another transaction explorer you can find here: https://xrpcharts.ripple.com/#/transactions/41B3042C4D76136F...