Reading A Block Explorer

This data is then presented in a human-readable web interface, allowing you to look up specific transactions, like you might search a library catalogue.

It has a unique identifier – a hash – then the sender and recipient addresses, the amount transferred, and the fee paid. It also shows which block the transaction was included in and its current confirmation count. But these are just surface details – let's look at them one by one.

A blockchain explorer is a searchable interface to the public ledger behind a blockchain. It indexes the blocks, transactions and wallet addresses so you can look up individual entries in the shared transaction history.

The key of an explorer is that it is a read-only tool. It – you can see exactly what has been mined and recorded to the chain, but you – and the ledger itself is continuously growing as more transactions are written.

Reading One Transaction Line By Line

When looking up a transaction, the explorer will present it with the same core fields.

• Transaction hash – This is the unique identifier for the transaction. If you want to cross-reference the transaction on other explorers, you reference this identifier.
• Amount – The quantity of the asset that the sender is transferring.
• Transaction Fee – The amount paid to the miner as a fee.
• Each block includes a batch of transactions – this lets you see the existence and timestamp of this relative to other transactions.
• Confirmations Count or Block Confirmations Received –. The number of new blocks added to the chain since the transaction was included in a block.

What Pending Means

In the status of a transaction, this field usually takes one of three forms.

• Pending – The transaction is pending and has not been added to a block yet.
• n confirmations – Here n denotes the number of confirmations. As the number of new blocks grows, the number of confirms will rise. Confirms are a measure of settlement confidence.
• Not yet included in a block or similar status –

Bitcoin vs. Ethereum-Style Ledgers

Bitcoin-style blockchains track transactions in the ledger. This is called the unspent transaction output (UTXO) model, where there are always separate inputs and outputs. Transfers show in the explorer as a sequence of inputs and outputs. The outputs are counted.

Contrast this to Ethereum and ERC-20 token issuers, which have an account balance model. Here, each wallet has its own balance that the explorer tracks the flow into and out of, stocked and sent in units. Addresses are akin to accounts where ERC-20 balances are tracked separately from Ether, and like any account-style chain, this includes contracts and storage in contract accounts.

So Ethereum-style chains also track the flow of native coins between contracts, as well as contract interactions with wallets, and so the explorer includes records of contract-to-contract actions.

An example of how this might appear in the explorer is.

Token Transfers Are Not Native Coin Movement

Token transfers are tracked differently to native coin movement.

In the explorer, token transactions are emitted by a token contract. They show changes in the chain state. So rather than tracking the flow of native coins, the explorer shows the creation and flow of new assets attached to a smart contract.

This is why your wallet might show a native coin balance but a token balance that doesn't match – the token contract is a separate instrument and it manages token accounts independently.

Similarly, while a token transaction might be listed with a hash, it is a separate contract instrument

What Read-Only Means

The blockchain explorer presents a mid-transaction snapshot of the blockchain.

But nothing is removed from the chain – it simply grows as new transactions are recorded. Send a coin or asset to a new address and they will not vanish from the explorer, they are recorded.

That's the key nature of a blockchain: once a transaction is recorded, it is there on the blockchain

So the explorer isn't the control room, it's the timeline of where everything happened.