Two and a half months after Irish startup Pixode launched its colored coins wallet — Coinprism, which we reported on in mid-May — it released a blockchain explorer for assets held by colored coin users, called Coinprism.info.

The colored coins blockchain explorer, which also features a directory of assets, “works like other block explorers, but it is also capable of interpreting colored coins transactions, and display the assets being transferred or issued,” founder Flavien Charlon said in a statement Monday.

This will let anyone explore what assets people hold on the Bitcoin blockchain in the form of colored coins, much in the same way Blockchain.info allows anyone to explore how much money is held in wallets.

Colored coins, however, are able to represent assets beyond simply currency. As Charlon told Cointelegraph in May: “Colored coins are about taking a fraction of a Bitcoin, and tagging it with a secondary, user-defined value. That value can then be stored on the blockchain, and transferred simply by transferring the underlying bitcoins.”

Using the Coinprism.info asset directory, the most transacted colored coin at the moment represents the gold coins currently being sold at BTC.blue.

Then, there is this user, who has a bus fare’s worth of Bitcoin in his/her wallet, plus almost 700,000 colored coins known as DICK. Guess what those coins represent.

Beta API

Elsewhere, Pixode also launched a colored coins’ REST API in beta that will allow developers to integrate colored coins transactions into their websites. “The API builds unsigned transactions, which can then be signed offline, ensuring consumers of the API do not have to trust Coinprism,” the company’s statement read.

Charlon said his company plans to roll out new features for the API in the future. “The goal is to make it easy for anyone to programmatically issue or transfer assets with just a few lines of code.”

At the heart of this technology is Pixode’s Open Assets protocol, which “distinguishes itself from alternatives such as Mastercoin and Counterparty by removing the centralization around an intermediary currency such as MSC or XCP, and working directly on top of Bitcoin,” Charlon said.

“While other projects try to add as many features as possible to their protocols, Open Assets, on the other hand, adheres to the philosophy that less is more, and takes the approach of simplicity and transparency. The protocol is final, so companies integrating colored coins can enjoy a stable and robust foundation.”

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