
Show HN: A Living Ledger – Visualization of the Ripple Network in Real-Time - free-trampolin
http://alivingledger.com
======
free-trampolin
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
Neat. What were some reasons why you chose Elixir to write it in?

~~~
free-trampolin
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
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
Yes bithomp has not necessarily the best interface. Another transaction
explorer you can find here:
[https://xrpcharts.ripple.com/#/transactions/41B3042C4D76136F...](https://xrpcharts.ripple.com/#/transactions/41B3042C4D76136F52751AA7ED491B9DAF54C32DE419ADA091A793C91F98B33A)

