New Service: Bitcoin Proxy!

Today we are excited to announce Bitcoin Proxy as the latest addition to the Start9 Service Marketplace! You can view the source code here.

Background

Bitcoin Proxy was originally created by Kixunil and later augmented by Start9’s own @_dr_bonez. Bitcoin Proxy sits in front of your Bitcoin node and acts as both a gatekeeper and a super charger. It gives you fine grained permission management, such that you can specify node permissions for various users or apps, and it grants unprecedented capabilities to your pruned node!

1. Fine-grained permission management

This was the original functionality of the service. Bitcoin Proxy enables you to specify several users and, for each user, the list of RPC calls they are allowed to make.

This is useful because bitcoind allows every user or application with a password to make possibly harmful calls like stopping the daemon or spending from wallet (if enabled). If you have several users or applications, you can provide the less trusted ones a different password and permissions than the others using this project.

2. On-demand block fetching

This is the new stuff.

By connecting to your pruned Bitcoin node through Bitcoin Proxy, your node will now behave as though it is not pruned! If a user or application requires a block that is not retained by your pruned node, Bitcoin Proxy will dynamically fetch the block over the P2P network, then verify its hash against your node to ensure validity.

The usefulness of this new technology is massive. It means that you can run multiple services against your pruned Bitcoin node — such as Lightning and BTCPay — without them fighting for control over the pruning. Both are happy because both believe they are dealing with an unpruned node.

Instructions

1. Ensure you are have EmbassyOS ≥ 0.2.5.
2. Ensure you have Bitcoin Core installed and running.
3. Install Bitcoin Proxy from the Service Marketplace.
4. Optionally set custom configurations. We recommend using the defaults.
5. Press Start.

That’s it! You are now running Bitcoin Proxy.