Blockchain Explorer

A Blockchain Explorer is a tool that allows anyone to explore any public cryptocurrency’s blockchain.

It allows you to review blockchain transactions as they’re added, view wallet balances and all transaction history, and check the status of transactions.

Traders, investors and analysts use blockchain explorers to analyze specific wallet addresses in an effort to gain a better understanding of buying and selling and potential shifts in market sentiment.

For instance, wallet addresses deemed to be held by whales (based on publicly viewable portfolio size) are watched by analysts for large asset transfers to and from exchanges, offering a potential sign that a whale is getting ready to offload a large portion of their holdings.

Blockchain explorers also all you to view and analyze:

a blockchain’s recent blocks
the transactions in a given block
the genesis block of a blockchain
mempool status
the largest transaction of the day
double-spend incidents
blockchain difficulty
hash rate
average transaction fees

Some blockchain explorers help analyze only single blockchains, while others allow you to explore over 20 blockchains for the same interface.

Related Terms

Genesis Block

The very first block or first few blocks recorded on a blockchain or blockchain-based protocol. The genesis block is often called Block 0 or Block 1. The genesis block sets the foundation for the rest of the blocks that are added to form a chain of blocks. That’s where we get the word “blockchain”. The most famous genesis block, and the very first Bitcoin block, called the Genesis Block, was created on January 3rd, 2009, by Bitcoin’s infamous and mysterious creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. Some consider this date to be the start of the cryptocurrency revolution – the start of it all!

Blockchain

Blockchain networks are at the heart of cryptocurrencies. A blockchain is a database, or digital ledger, made up of a series of interconnected blocks containing transaction data created on the network over some period of time. Each block in a blockchain also contains a unique identifier unlike any other block in the chain called a hash. Think of the hash as a fingerprint identifying that block for all other blocks. Distributed ledger technology (DLT) is another name frequently used in relation to blockchains.

Wallet Address

A unique string of letters and numbers that represents a wallet, exchange, or blockchain address. This identifier (unique from every other address on the planet) serves as the virtual street address for the specific currency on that currency’s blockchain.

Wallet

Made up of a unique public address called your public key (similar to your bank account number) that you can share with the world, your friends, family, and other businesses and companies that you trust, to send and receive digital assets. A wallet also stores a private key (much like the PIN that you use to access your bank account at the ATM), which, when combined with the public key, confirms ownership of the wallet, and allows you as the wallet owner to view the digital record of your wallet transactions, and allows you to perform actions such as buying, selling, withdrawing, and swapping funds.

Transaction Fee

Fees charged by a blockchain network to execute and validate transactions on that blockchain network. Fees are used to incentivize miners to complete complex and expensive cryptographic problems to validate transaction blocks to the leger of a blockchain.