One interesting thing about blockchains is that you can see all of the transactions ever processed on them. This feature, unique to public blockchains, will persist for all of time—or, at least, until someone switches the internet off.
You can download a blockchain ledger for yourself and read through it on your computer. But a much easier method is to parse this data with a tool called a blockchain explorer—a website that lets you scan through a blockchain’s entire history.
On an explorer, you can witness the moment, etched forever into history by the immutable nature of decentralized ledgers, that Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto mined coins now worth tens of billions of dollars. Or, you can follow the alleged money-laundering attempts made by those in control of the spoils of the Bitfinex hacker.
Privacy coins such as Monero mark the major exception to this fascinating rule. You can see that a transaction has taken place, but who sent what to whom is obscured.
In this guide, we’ll teach you the basics of how to use these tools for yourself. We’ll primarily rely on Etherscan, the popular Ethereum blockchain explorer—but trust us: most blockchain explorers are fundamentally the same.
On blockchains, transactions are batched into groups known as “blocks.” These blocks are then “chained” together on decentralized ledgers, which is where “blockchain” gets its name. Crucially, these transactions are confirmed by an anonymous network of computers.
On Ethereum and Bitcoin, they are processed through a mechanism called proof of work, whereby “miners” expend computational energy to race to find a specific number. Proof-of-stake blockchains like Solana,BNBchain and Avalanche let users “stake” tokens in order to process transactions; those who have staked the most transactions reap the largest rewards.
There’s one final thing you should know about blockchain explorers. For blockchains that support smart contracts, such as Ethereum, you can see all the code contained within a smart contract right on the blockchain explorer. smart contract are useful when you want to confirm that the token you’re buying, or the decentralized finance protocol with which you are interacting, is legitimate—people often misleadingly market tokens as the “official” smart contract, when in reality they are nothing more than knock-offs.
You can even interact with the smart contract itself by heading to “write contract.” Indeed, the websites of all DeFi protocols are just prettier ways of interacting with a smart contract.
Summary
So there you have it: Blockchain explorers explained for the layperson. If you still don’t understand, don’t worry: You have plenty of time to learn. So long as people are still using blockchains, you’ll be able to sift through blockchain data.
