Learn Bitcoin
Bitcoin Guides
Short, practical explainers behind the tools on this site. Each one is a few minutes of reading, written to answer one question well — no fluff, no filler.
Reading the chain
How a blockchain explorer works
What you can look up, what the fields mean, and what an explorer can't tell you.
Block height
What the current height means, how confirmations stack, and why reorgs are rare but real.
The mempool
Where transactions wait, how queue pressure builds, and how to read it before you send.
Fees and sat/vB
Why fees are bids for block space, and how sat/vB decides who confirms first.
The public node network
Public Bitcoin nodes
What makes a node "public," why reachability matters, and how to pick peers you can trust.
The node map
Where reachable nodes appear to be, and why geography on the Bitcoin network is a hint, not a fact.
Nodes by country
How node counts break down by country, and what the distribution says about the network.
Client versions
Which software reachable nodes run, and why version spread matters for network health.
Service flags
The capabilities peers advertise — full blocks, witness data, filters — and what they mean.