Hi all, What is the fastest way to track the appearance of a new block in the blockchain? Bitcoin core? Other minds?
Any well connected peer on the network will be fast. Detecting it is really a matter of waiting until a peer that you are connected to has received it, verified it, and then forwarded it to you.
Once you've detected it, you'll need to verify that it is valid. To do that without trusting any third party you'll need a full node implementation. There are a few of them out there. I'd suggest either Bitcoin Core (written in c++) or Bcoin (written in Node.js).