Tracking: Block Explorer support

[mpguerra]

Motivation

This is the tracking issue to outline the work necessary in order for zebra to support block explorers.

Zcash Block explorers

• Blockchair
• Tokenview
• Bitquery
• Blockexplorer.one
• Zcash Block Explorer (https://github.com/nighthawk-apps/zcash-explorer)

We're initially implementing support for https://github.com/nighthawk-apps/zcash-explorer.

RPC Methods

Using the Zcash Block Explorer from above as an example, these are the following RPC methods that would need to be implemented in zebra:

• Implement getblockhashes RPC method #8436
• Implement getmempoolinfo RPC method #8437
• Implement getnetworksolps RPC method #8438
• Implement getaddressdeltas RPC method #8440
• Implement z_listunifiedreceivers RPC method #8441
• Implement getblockheader RPC method #8442
• Implement z_validatepaymentdisclosure RPC method #8443
• Implement validateaddress RPC method #8444
• Implement z_validateaddress RPC method #8445

The following RPC methods should also be updated to support all of the required query and result fields:

• Update getblock RPC method #8446
• Update getrawmempool RPC method #8447
• Update getinfo RPC method #8448
• Update getblockchaininfo RPC method #8449
• Update getpeerinfo RPC method #8450
• Update getrawtransaction RPC method #8451
• Update getaddressbalance RPC method #8452

Other

• Install and run Zcash Block Explorer locally for testing purposes #8456
• Add an error field to RPC responses #8672

[oxarbitrage]

Hey @mpguerra , thank you for putting all this together. I think we need a ticket to install (fork if changes are needed) locally the https://github.com/nighthawk-apps/zcash-explorer

[mpguerra]

Hey @mpguerra , thank you for putting all this together. I think we need a ticket to install (fork if changes are needed) locally the https://github.com/nighthawk-apps/zcash-explorer

This is now #8456

[upbqdn]

@mpguerra could you add the resources you used to compose the lists of the RPCs?

[mpguerra]

@mpguerra could you add the resources you used to compose the lists of the RPCs?

https://gist.github.com/oxarbitrage/a56f7e6b9b198ba70150a3afb2ffc949

[mpguerra]

It may be that we want to prioritise some RPC methods first as there may be some features from the Tools section that we may not want to support from the start:

[upbqdn]

@conradoplg I noticed you tried running https://github.com/nighthawk-apps/zcash-explorer locally. It should use this tool https://github.com/nighthawk-apps/zcashex as a middleware between the explorer and full node. It looks like it should be sufficient to implement the RPCs used in this file https://github.com/nighthawk-apps/zcashex/blob/main/lib/zcashex.ex to have a full support of the block explorer.

[upbqdn]

(So I think you don't need to list the RPCs manually.)

[upbqdn]

I extracted the RPCs from https://github.com/nighthawk-apps/zcashex/blob/main/lib/zcashex.ex:

• getblockchaininfo
• getmempoolinfo
• gettxoutsetinfo
• getinfo
• getmemoryinfo
• getmininginfo
• getnetworkinfo
• getpeerinfo
• getbestblockhash
• getblockcount
• getdifficulty
• getblock
• getblocksubsidy
• getnetworksolps
• getblockhashes
• getrawtransaction
• getaddressbalance
• getaddressdeltas
• getaddresstxids
• getblockheader
• getrawmempool
• sendrawtransaction
• decoderawtransaction
• generate
• validateaddress
• z_validatepaymentdisclosure
• z_validateaddress
• z_listunifiedreceivers

Some of the RPCs are already listed in the PR description, but these are missing:

• gettxoutsetinfo
• getmemoryinfo
• getmininginfo
• getnetworkinfo
• getbestblockhash
• getblockcount
• getdifficulty
• getblocksubsidy
• getaddresstxids
• sendrawtransaction
• decoderawtransaction
• generate

[upbqdn]

Here's a list of RPCs from Conrado which splits them according to what Zebra does and doesn't implement:

Zebra has:
getblockchaininfo
getinfo
getmininginfo
getpeerinfo
getbestblockhash
getblockcount
getdifficulty
getblock
getblocksubsidy
getnetworksolps
getrawtransaction
sendrawtransaction
getaddressbalance
getaddresstxids
validateaddress
z_validateaddress
getrawmempool
z_listunifiedreceivers

Zebra doesn't have:
getmempoolinfo
gettxoutsetinfo
getmemoryinfo
getnetworkinfo
getblockhashes
z_validatepaymentdisclosure
getaddressdeltas
decoderawtransaction
getblockheader

[pacu]

@oxarbitrage Is the elastic search feature of Zebra oriented to support Zcash Block Explorer uniquely or does it go beyond the scope of this tracking issue?

[mpguerra]

@oxarbitrage Is the elastic search feature of Zebra oriented to support Zcash Block Explorer uniquely or does it go beyond the scope of this tracking issue?

The elastic search feature was NOT meant to support a Zcash block explorer, it was just a hack sprint experiment that @oxarbitrage wanted to try out.

It's our intention to implement the RPC methods in this tracking issue in order to support a block explorer such as Nighthawk's Zcash Explorer.

However, we are not aware of anyone that is currently maintaining this block explorer, nor do we intend to take over maintenance of it. Ideally, we would collaborate with some existing teams that are running zcash block explorers and help them to replace their zcashd instance with zebra by implementing their required RPC methods.

EDIT: If someone has plans to take over development of https://github.com/nighthawk-apps/zcash-explorer we'd be interested in providing some feedback on some incompatibilities with JSON-RPC standards, @upbqdn has more details on this.