ompool

ompool

A live Bitcoin mempool and blockchain dashboard for the terminal, with an optional SuperCollider instrument that plays the network as it happens.

Every transaction entering the mempool becomes a plucked note: small amounts high, whales low, cheap fees left, urgent fees right. New blocks land as a gong and step a chord progression. Fee pressure sets the harmonic tension, mempool inflow sets the drum density, and the tempo itself follows how busy the network is.

ompool is early alpha software: expect rough edges, and expect the sound to change between releases.

Install

With Go 1.27 or newer:

go install github.com/pat-riley/ompool@latest

Prebuilt binaries for Linux, macOS, and Windows are attached to each release.

For sound you also need SuperCollider installed so that sclang is on your PATH, and a running audio server that it can use (PipeWire or JACK on Linux, CoreAudio on macOS). The dashboard works without it.

sudo pacman -S supercollider      # Arch
sudo apt install supercollider    # Debian / Ubuntu
brew install --cask supercollider # macOS

Usage

ompool opens the title screen and module picker. You can also open a module directly:

ompool overview        the complete network dashboard
ompool audio           the overview, sonified
ompool blocks          a live feed of newly mined blocks
ompool transactions    live transactions entering the mempool
ompool viewer          inspect a transaction, its UTXOs, hex, and embedded data
ompool mempool         backlog, weight, and activity
ompool mining          hashrate, rewards, and pool distribution
ompool version         print the version

Press Esc to return to the picker and q to quit. Dashboard modules fetch a network snapshot, subscribe to a live websocket stream, and refresh the snapshot every 15 seconds. Data comes from the public mempool.space API; set OMPOOL_API_URL to the API base URL of a self-hosted instance to use that instead.

Audio

ompool audio is the overview with two differences. Transactions are revealed one per step of a musical clock rather than as they arrive, and the tempo follows the network: transaction inflow and the mempool backlog map onto 70 bpm (idle) to 160 bpm (saturated), easing between values so the beat never lurches. A Tempo panel shows the bpm, the beat, recent history, and the launcher status.

When the view opens, ompool starts sclang on the instrument embedded in the binary, and stops it again when you leave. Booting takes a few seconds. If something already holds the OSC port, typically SuperCollider's IDE, ompool feeds that instead of launching a second copy, so you can edit the instrument live:

ompool instrument > my-instrument.scd   # dump the embedded script
ompool instrument --test-sender > test.scd   # a fake feed for auditioning it

Open the script in SCIDE, evaluate the whole block, then run ompool audio. To have ompool launch your edited version itself, point OMPOOL_INSTRUMENT at the file. The launcher writes the script it runs and instrument.log to ~/.cache/ompool (or the platform equivalent); look there if it goes quiet.

The mapping from data to music is documented at the top of instrument/ompool.scd.

Transaction viewer

Paste a transaction ID or a mempool.space transaction URL and press Enter to inspect inputs, output UTXOs and spend state, decoded metadata, and embedded payload hex. Shift+L loads the Len Sassaman ASCII-art tribute and Shift+G the genesis coinbase with its Times headline. Tab moves the scroll focus between columns.

OSC protocol

ompool mirrors what it shows as OSC messages over UDP, so any instrument (SuperCollider, Max, Pure Data, a DAW) can play in sync with the screen. All arguments are float32.

/btc/tx       value_sats fee_rate_sat_per_vb      as each transaction is revealed on screen
/btc/block    height tx_count                     when a new block is detected
/btc/fees     fastest halfHour hour economy min   sat/vB, from each snapshot
/btc/mempool  count vsize vbytes_per_second       from snapshots and live flow updates
/btc/clock    bpm step steps_per_bar              audio view only: one per grid step

The clock message lets an instrument lock its own sequencer to ompool's bar; the embedded instrument adopts the tempo and re-aligns on each bar start.

Configuration

Development

git clone https://github.com/pat-riley/ompool
cd ompool
go test ./...
./scripts/dev overview   # rebuild and relaunch on every save (Linux, needs inotify-tools)

See CONTRIBUTING.md.

Versions follow semantic versioning and live only in git tags. Pushing a v* tag makes GitHub Actions build the binaries, stamp the tag into ompool version and the title screen, and publish a release. Builds from a checkout report dev and the commit instead.

License

MIT