Bitcoin Graph Visualization

Motivation for the Project

The purpose of this internship project is to build a visual analytics tool that helps to analyze the history of the Bitcoin system. We want to understand the main players and choices that have been made in regards to Bitcoins and to put this information side-by-side with the phenomena observed in the graph of Bitcoin transactions. The goals is to see the limits of the Bitcoin system and the effects of decisions on the transactions.

The intern will work with experts in the data and will receive introductions and help from them regarding the data and exploration goals.

Goals of the Project

The intern will build a multi-view visual analytics tool that reads and displays detail and aggregated information of Bitcoin transactions. Throughout the project, the goal is to make a variety of data sources interactively explorable together. One of the main sources will be the bitcoin transaction graph. It contains 60 million edges from the very first transaction onwards (you can step through a version of the data here: https://blockchain.info/ and look at another compiled version here: http://compbio.cs.uic.edu/data/bitcoin/). The tool will involve interactive capabilities to explore this graph. Additional views will bring in contextual information from one of the following sources of data:

  1. - the sourceforge and github repository of bitcoin source code
  2. - the discussion forum bitcointalk.org
  3. - the price of bitcoins
  4. - positions of political or economic institutions

The tool should be built using a user-centered design process. That is, first the student will consult with experts and do a small requirements analysis with them. Based on this pre-designe evaluation a set of requirements for the analysis tool will be established, and subsequently the tool will built. Throughout the implementation of the tool, the intern will stay in close contact with the expert analysts and discuss intermediate steps in the design process to receive feedback and further improve the final system.

Requirements

  1. The visual analytics tools needs to be implemented. Thus, the student should be familiar with at least one major programming language such as Java, C++, or C#.
  2. The communication about this project will be in English.
  3. Being interested by Bitcoins is not strictly required but certainly a plus.

Supervision at Aviz

The project will be advised by Petra Isenberg and Tobias Isenberg