Blocks

Source bitcoinuniverseio/core (private)

Path frontend/src/util/explorer-origins.js, frontend/src/util/block-search.js, backend mempool facade

Chain bitcoin, dogecoin

Network mainnet

Verified 2026-09-01

The chain tip Core verifies

Core reads a verified Bitcoin mainnet head through its own provider registry, from Universe-operated infrastructure. There is no public-provider fallback.

That tip is load-bearing in three places:

Application readiness. An unavailable or invalid chain tip makes read readiness fail closed. It does not degrade to zero.
Index lag. Every protocol’s freshness is measured as the distance between the node tip and that index’s own tip. Both figures are published per protocol.
Mutation gates. Several protocols recheck the Bitcoin checkpoint on every mutation and refuse to proceed if it has moved or cannot be read.

A failed protocol index stays visible in the health diagnostics and never replaces the authoritative chain head with a zero.

You can read the tip yourself:

curl -s https://api.bitcoinuniverse.io/mempool/api/blocks/tip/height
curl -s https://api.bitcoinuniverse.io/mempool/api/blocks/tip/hash

Recent blocks and the mempool

The public facade serves a compact summary of recent blocks, and a mempool summary:

curl -s https://api.bitcoinuniverse.io/mempool/api/blocks
# [{ "id": "...", "height": 964970, "timestamp": 1788228695,
#    "tx_count": 3944, "medianFee": 1 }]

curl -s https://api.bitcoinuniverse.io/mempool/api/mempool
# { "count": 31272, "vsize": 8813263 }

Both are documented in the OpenAPI reference.

Fee rates

Fee estimates come from the same Universe-operated services, with no public fallback. Short-lived validated cache entries may smooth a momentary interruption; a genuine outage produces an explicit unavailable answer rather than a stale rate.

curl -s https://api.bitcoinuniverse.io/mempool/api/v1/fees/recommended
# { "fastestFee": 2, "halfHourFee": 2, "hourFee": 1,
#   "economyFee": 1, "minimumFee": 1 }

In the interface, the fee panel in the header carries the current rates alongside the fiat quote, and names the source and the time that quote was measured.

Blocks as protocol identity

Two protocols use a block number as an asset identity rather than as chain metadata, and Core treats them accordingly.

Bitmap. A bitmap district is a block. Its identity comes from the indexed block number, not from an inscription’s mined block height and not from a display field. Search recognises both 792435 and 792435.bitmap. Every Bitmap surface consolidates records by block height, because provider listing ids, inscription ids, and historical activity ids are all observations of the same district rather than separate assets.
DMT. Mint availability is scoped by block. On the Blockdrop mint surface, a block search returns how many elements that block holds in total, how many are already minted, and therefore how many remain available, along with a completion percentage and the element, phase mint price, and limit per mint. A total of zero produces zero pages and zero percent rather than a division by zero or a fabricated figure.

Why there is no block detail page

Core’s job is metaprotocol assets, ownership, and markets. A block detail page that only restated what a block explorer already shows would be a second-rate copy of a solved problem, and keeping one accurate is a standing cost.

What Core does instead is verify the chain tip itself and publish, per protocol, how far behind each index is. That is the block-level fact a metaprotocol reader actually needs and that a general block explorer cannot give them.

Where an outbound link is needed, its origin is a deployment setting, so a deployment can point those links at a Universe explorer rather than a public one.