Toshi is a complete implementation of the Bitcoin protocol, written in Ruby and backed by PostgreSQL. It provides a RESTful API that is ideal for building scalable web applications or analyzing blockchain data.
Toshi is designed to be fully compatible with Bitcoin Core. It performs complete transaction and block validation, and passes 100% of TheBlueMatt's regression test suite. For much of the core protocol logic, Toshi makes use of the bitcoin-ruby library written and maintained by Julian Langschaedel.
Toshi was built at Coinbase, with the goal of replacing our core Bitcoin network infrastructure in the near future. It is currently in beta, and not recommended for production use until it has received sufficient testing from the Bitcoin community.
You can see Toshi running on various networks at the following URLs:
- Complete Bitcoin node implementation
- Fully passes TheBlueMatt's regression test suite
- PostgeSQL backed (more convenient for web applications and research)
- JSON, Hex, and Binary API
- Simple web interface to monitor node status
A Bitcoin node is simply a client on the Bitcoin peer-to-peer network. It validates and relays transactions and blocks to other clients according to the consensus rules as implemented in Bitcoin Core. A "full node" implies that the client retains a complete copy of the Bitcoin blockchain.
Toshi is a Bitcoin implementation designed for building highly scalable web applications. It allows you to query the blockchain using a REST API or raw SQL. It comprises a number of individual services, using a shared database. Because Toshi saves much more information and indexes more data than Bitcoin Core, it requires much more space to store the blockchain (~220GB vs ~25GB as of September 2014). However, this makes it possible to run much richer queries that would otherwise not be possible with Bitcoin Core.
Bitcoin Core (the reference implementation) is designed to run on a single server, and uses a mixture of raw files and LevelDB to store the blockchain. It allows you to query the blockchain using a JSON-RPC interface.
Some examples of queries which Toshi can easily answer, which are not possible with Bitcoin Core:
- List all unspent outputs for any address (Bitcoin Core only indexes unspent outputs for specific addresses added to the local "wallet").
- Get the balance of any address
- Get the balance of any address at a specific point in time
- Find all transactions for any address
- Find all transactions in a certain time period
- Find all transactions over a certain amount
- Find all transactions given a set of addresses
Coinbase maintains a hosted version of Toshi that you can use at:
This is the easiest way to get up and running. You can also run your own version of Toshi as described below.
Toshi uses Vagrant to install and run all prerequisites (postgresql, redis).
$ git clone https://github.com/coinbase/toshi.git
$ cd toshi
$ vagrant up
$ createdb -U postgres -h 127.0.0.1 -p 21001 toshi_development
$ createdb -U postgres -h 127.0.0.1 -p 21001 toshi_test
$ gem install bundler
$ bundle install
$ bundle exec rake db:migrate
$ foreman start
$ open http://localhost:5000/
Alternatively, you can use Docker:
$ docker build -t=coinbase/node .
$ docker run -e REDIS_URL=redis://... -e DATABASE_URL=postgres://... -e TOSHI_ENV=production coinbase/node foreman start
Toshi can be deployed directly to Heroku:
Toshi can also be installed on your own server. You will need:
- PostgreSQL (300gb+ disk space required to sync mainnet)
- Redis (50mb+ RAM recommended)
- Ruby 2.0.0+
To run Toshi on your server, simply:
$ git clone https://github.com/coinbase/toshi.git
$ cd toshi
$ cp config/toshi.yml.example config/toshi.yml
$ vi config/toshi.yml
$ REDIS_URL=redis://... DATABASE_URL=postgres://... TOSHI_ENV=production bundle exec foreman start
Note: The Toshi API provides raw blockchain data only. If you are looking for APIs to store bitcoin securely, buy/sell bitcoin, send/request bitcoin, accept merchant payments, etc) please check out the proprietary Coinbase API.
The API supports three data types by adding an extension on any URL.
.json - JSON (default if none specified)
.hex - raw binary, in hex form
.bin - raw binary
For GET requests, the extension specifies the format of the returned data. For POST/PUT requests, the extension specifies the format of the request body.
Any API call which returns as list can also be passed an offset or limit parameter. The default limit is 100.
# Blocks
GET /api/v0/blocks # Get a paginated list of blocks
GET /api/v0/blocks/<hash> # Get a block by hash
GET /api/v0/blocks/<height> # Get a block by height
GET /api/v0/blocks/latest # Get the latest block
GET /api/v0/blocks/<hash>/transactions # Get transactions in a block
# Transactions
GET /api/v0/transactions/<hash> # Get transaction by hash
GET /api/v0/transactions/unconfirmed # Get list of unconfirmed transactions
POST /api/v0/transactions # Broadcast a transaction to the network
# Addresses
GET /api/v0/addresses/<hash> # Get address balance and details
GET /api/v0/addresses/<hash>/transactions # Get address transactions
GET /api/v0/addresses/<hash>/unspent_outputs # Get unspent outputs on an address
Toshi parses config/toshi.yml according to its current environment (determined by the TOSHI_ENV environment variable). Toshi will default to the development environment if one isn't specified and the test environment during rspec tests.
Toshi will use the config/toshi.yml.example file if the config/toshi.yml file does not exist.
You can run the test suite for Toshi as follows:
$ rake db:create TOSHI_ENV=test
$ rspec
- Fork this repo and make changes in your own fork
- Run existing tests with
bundle exec rspecand add a new test for your changes if applicable. - Commit your changes and push to your fork
git push origin master - Create a new pull request and submit it back to the project.