Data Tools: Blockchain Explorers

In the Extracting Value from Blockchain Data series, we have seen that raw blockchain data is obscure and human-unreadable. Block explorers allow users to access and explore information about blocks, transactions, smart contracts and other data stored on a blockchain. It provides a user-friendly interface to navigate and search through the blockchain, giving visibility into specific details such as transaction history, addresses, confirmations, and block timestamps. This is particularly useful in case researchers need to analyze a specific (complex) transaction or need insights into the activity of a particular address or smart contract, as opposed to more general and comprehensive data analyses on a group of addresses or contracts.

Etherscan was launched in 2015, shortly after the Ethereum network itself was launched in July 2015. It was developed to provide a window into the Ethereum blockchain, the first popularized smart contract blockchain that provided a robust and Turing-complete platform for executing smart contracts. Etherscan provides a way to visualize and understand this network, making it more accessible to a broader audience.