How to use Service Providers?

Bitcoinlib uses external service providers to get address, transaction and blockchain information for your wallet or other application.

If you install Bitcoinlib it uses external and free service providers, so you do not have to do anything extra to get it working.

However those free providers have transaction limits, slow responses, downtimes or changing Api’s which can cause unexpected results. For larges wallets, complicated projects with a lot of requests or production environments, you basically have three options.

Setup a local node

You need a server with a large storage and a stable connection at your home or a hosting provider. And then follow the manual to setup an Blockbook, ElectrumX or Bcoin server.

You can also setup a Bitcoind Node, but a standard node cannot get utxo’s or address information for external wallet addresses.

Get a payed subscription

There a many providers which offer a payed subscription, many unfortunately are really expensive.

At the time of writing Nownodes offers a $20 a month subscription. You can create an account and use the example providers configuration file at https://github.com/1200wd/bitcoinlib/blob/master/bitcoinlib/data/providers.examples-nownodes.json

We have not tested other payed service providers at the moment, but please let us know if you found any good options.

Add another service Provider

You can also Add another service Provider to this library by updating settings and write a new service provider class.

If you tested the new provider thoroughly don’t forget to create a pull request ;)