British developer Kevin Small has built a way for bitcoin users to visualize how the network functions using virtual reality with the Blockchain 3D Explorer.

Small said that he plans to show off the in-development product at the London Blockchain Summit 2017 Nov. 28. Users curious about the explorer, and who don’t want to wait for the demo, can download it now from Small’s website.

Cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin carry value — the market cap for bitcoin exceeded $100 billion in October — and can be used to make money or buy coffee at the corner store but they still only exist in computers and networks. As a result, it’s hard to understand fully or visualize how they operate. Thus, blockchain explorers were built to help analysts, operators, developers and users better understand the inner workings of blockchain-based cryptocurrencies.

Tools such as blockchain explorers have existed almost as long as bitcoin and other blockchain-based cryptocurrencies. In most cases, block explorers act as search engines allowing users to seek out and view specific transactions that happened with bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin or any other number of publicly visible blockchain currencies. With an explorer, it is possible not just to visualize the movement of currency across the history of a transaction trail but to export specific and pertinent information about that history for later analysis.

Popular examples include cryptocurrency analytics startup Blocktrail B.V., which was acquired by Bitmain Technologies Ltd. in 2016, and digital wallet Blockchain Luxembourg S.A.’s blockchain explorer on Blockchain.info.

The Blockchain 3D Explorer currently uses data drawn from the tracker on Blockchain.info, but Small has plans to open up the explorer to draw from more sources.

Blockchains not only “chain” transactions together in order to provide tamperproof security, but the transactions themselves can be traced as coins move from account to account. This allows for any number of visualization methods that can display trees with branches of various colors and thicknesses to represent currency moved and consolidated.

In the case of Small’s explorer, transactions are mapped using colored spheres representing transactions connected to red cubes representing account addresses. The blockchain is a historical record of every time coins move from address to address and that journey can tell an analyst or curious user a lot about what happened from an originating transaction to the present.

“Visualize flows of bitcoins as they flow from address to transaction to address to transaction … and so on and on,” said Small, describing the explorer in action. “By clicking on transactions (the blue/green spheres) or addresses (the red cubes) more and more of the network can be displayed, and you can trace the movement of funds backwards and forwards in time.”

Small’s explorer expands in three dimensions and is accessible in virtual reality. This means that users can explore the bitcoin blockchain by immersing themselves directly in it, opening up branching transactions and following them across the chain by flying through the visualization.

The currently available version of the Blockchain 3D Explorer works on Windows (32-bit and 64-bit) as well as MacOS, iOS and Linux. Users of Android-based virtual reality headsets can also download the app from the Google Play store, which enables the use of Google Cardboard version 2 or higher.

Small said he plans to expand the features of the explorer to add more platforms including a web-based demo using Unity WebGL, a full-featured build on web browsers and support the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift headsets. He also plans to add other sources of data including the Ethereum ERC20 blockchain, Hyperledger blockchains and alternative bitcoin block explorer sources, aside from Blockchain.info).

Image: Kevin Small