Block Explorer: How To Explore?

What Is A Block Explorer?

Block Explorer is something where folks can see the moment, engraved forever into the history by decentralized ledger’s immutable nature.

Satoshi Nakamoto, father of Bitcoin, mined coins which are currently worth tens of billions. Or folks can go after alleged money laundering efforts created by those who executed Bitfinex hack.

Block Explorers backs distinct blockchains. For Ethereum blockchain, Etherscan is the gold standard, Solana has Solscan, and Bitcoin is the center of focus for Bitcoin.com.

However, these distinct block explorers offer similar data with respect to the blockchain they are backing, a robust and precise history regarding all transaction data ever processed on a specific blockchain.

Privacy Coins Are Exception for Block Explorer

Privacy coins like Monero tags a core exception to this mesmerizing concept. Folks are able to witness that a transaction has occurred, but who are the parties involved in this, that is, the sender and receiver, are obscured.

We will further see the fundamentals of how tools in Block Explorer can be utilized, but we must keep this in mind that majority of Blockchain Explorers offer fundamentally the same information.

What Does A Transaction Hold?

Through a Block Explorer, folks are able to keep an eye on transfers happening all over the blockchain, involving frequency, volume and other associated attributes of blockchain transactions.

Blockchain users are recognized through their wallets. On Ethereum, they all commence with ox. One cannot identify who is the owner of particular wallet unless a Block explorer such as Etherscan has tagged it.

In the image above, we can witness that both transactions are transferred from a wallet labeled as mining pool Ethermine.

Additional details can be witnessed simply by clicking on a transaction. In the image above, we can witness $28.14 worth of Ethereum in dollars, how much gas fee was charged etc.

Block And Chains

Transactions on blockchains are batched into clusters called as “blocks.” These blocks are then linked together on decentralized ledgers to make a chain of blocks, this is where it got its title blockchain. Vitally, these transactions are affirmed by an incognito computer network.

On Bitcoin and Ethereum, they are processed via a mechanism known as proof of work, whereby miners expend computational power to get ahead in a race to find a particular number.

Proof of Stake blockchains such as Avalanche and Solana allows folks to stake tokens for processing transactions; the ones who have staked the majority of transactions, bag the greatest rewards.

Relevance to all this to a Block Explorer is that anyone can witness this process unfold digitally. Every transaction is defined by a distinct identifier called “hash. Checkout the image above.

We can witness in this image that miner bagged 2.18 ETH reward for verifying block, and that it took 6 seconds for miner to conduct all computational work. Difficulty here is a calculation which states how much power the miner possesses to deploy it to mine blocks that are still persisting.

Burnt fees means the fees eliminated by EIP-1559, an Ethereum update which went live back in August 2021. It eliminates some fees spent by user rather than sending it to the miner.

Smart Contracts

There’s a fact everyone should be aware of regarding Block Explorers. For blockchains which backs smart contracts, like Ethereum, one can witness each code contained inside a smart contract precisely on blockchain explorer.

Let us take a look at Gala Games (GALA). Exploring the smart contracts page of token on Etherscan, we can witness that there are 346,510 token holders, how many tokens are there currently circulating in the market.

Folks are able to interact with smart contract itself by exploring “write contract” section.

Block Explorers are easy to use, but in order to access them according to our requirements, we at least need to have a little knowledge regarding what we are looking for.

And if you are skeptical regarding utilizing Block Explorer, know this, several folks all around the world are still exploring what a blockchain is. So rejoice, you are far ahead then many of such folks if you are acquainted with blockchain.

Just take your time and try to explore prominent block explorer like Etherscan

Andrew is a blockchain developer who developed his interest in cryptocurrencies while his post-graduation. He is a keen observer of details and shares his passion for writing along with being a developer. His backend knowledge about blockchain helps him give a unique perspective to his writing