[Feature] Get utxos for non-wallet addresses #16388

Hey team,

Adding a feature request here for the ability to query all utxos for a given address(s) regardless if it's in the nodes wallet or not.

I understand the reasoning here of why it's not included out-of-the-box as it could add a significant amount of overhead to the core requirements of running the node.

However, it's fairly concerning that the most of the articles about how to get this functionality just point to using an external api to fetch this info. Tutorials of how to get this functionality on the developer side are also painful when just trying to get this fairly common feature up and running. Isn't part of the point of running a full node to be able to get anything you need without the reliance of a third party? "Don't trust, verify"

I would imagine the best implementation for this would be to add a flag in the bitcoin.conf of something like indexAddrs=1 or something like that.

Anyway, just putting the idea out there. Thanks

You can use the scantxoutset RPC to do this already. This will give you all UTXOs for an address or a descriptor. I will not scan the blockchain for all transactions or transaction outputs for it, just the UTXO set.

You can use the scantxoutset RPC to do this already. This will give you all UTXOs for an address or a descriptor. I will not scan the blockchain for all transactions or transaction outputs for it, just the UTXO set.

Ok sweet! How would I write something like this then? bitcoin-cli scantxoutset muXQpwvT2NNEXB5keSPmaPFnKpTnR2ZSNV

I've tried many different ways of writing this command but can't seem to get it correct.

@mikemilla

utxo () { bitcoin-cli scantxoutset start '["'"addr($1)"'"]'

$ utxo 34xp4vRoCGJym3xR7yCVPFHoCNxv4Twseo
[..]
  "total_amount": 165204.35005579
}

@jb55 looking for a basic command line example. Tried about 2 dozen different implementations of your snippet.

Some resulted in nothing, others with errors, others saying I need a descriptor.

Try

bitcoin-cli scantxoutset start '["addr(34xp4vRoCGJym3xR7yCVPFHoCNxv4Twseo)"]'

Usually the issue tracker is used to track technical issues related to the Bitcoin Core code base. Keep in mind that general bitcoin questions and/or support requests are best directed to the Bitcoin StackExchange.

@promag I tried that several times and it returned an error.

Please open an issue in stackexchange and provide more detailed information, like version used, output of commands etc.

For those still curious about this. I was able to get a node running and connected to a javascript app. Here is the command that will work with bitcoin-core via javascript.

https://www.npmjs.com/package/bitcoin-core

const utxos = await client.command('scantxoutset', 'start', ['addr(some_valid_address), addr(some_valid_address)'])