What is a Block Explorer?

If you have ever sent or received cryptocurrency, you may have wondered: "How can I verify that my transaction actually went through?" The answer lies in a tool called a block explorer.

A block explorer is a search engine for a blockchain. It allows anyone to look up and verify transactions, wallet addresses, smart contracts, and more in real time, all without needing special software or technical knowledge.

Because blockchains are decentralized and public, every transaction that has ever occurred is visible to anyone. A block explorer is the tool that makes navigating this vast public record easy and human-readable.

What Can You Do With a Block Explorer?

Block explorers let you:

• Look up any transaction using its unique transaction hash (TX hash) to see its status, sender, recipient, and value.
• View wallet address activity, including all incoming and outgoing transactions, current token balances, and NFT collections.
• Inspect individual blocks to see which transactions were included and which miner or validator produced it.
• Explore smart contracts, including their source code (if verified), functions and parameters, internal transactions, and event logs.
• Monitor gas prices and network congestion in real time.
• Verify token transfers, including ERC-20 and NFT (ERC-721 & ERC-1155) activity.

Learn how to navigate the Etherscan homepage.

What Is Etherscan?

Etherscan is the leading block explorer for the Ethereum Blockchain. A block explorer is a search engine that allows users to easily look up, confirm, and validate transactions that have taken place on the Ethereum Blockchain. We are independently operated and developed by a team of individuals who are truly passionate and excited about the kinds of decentralized information and infrastructure applications that Ethereum makes possible.

And just like you, we are "users" of the Ethereum Blockchain. Etherscan is not funded, operated, or managed by the Ethereum Foundation but instead exists as an independent entity. The Ethereum Blockchain has a public ledger (like a decentralized database) which Etherscan.io indexes and then makes available this information through our site. Our mission is to facilitate Blockchain transparency by indexing and making searchable all transactions on the Ethereum Blockchain in the most transparent and accessible way possible.

Etherscan is not a wallet service provider, we do not store your private keys and we have no control over the transactions that take place in the Ethereum network. As such, we are not able to provide any help in reversing/redirecting transactions or recovering lost funds.

In addition, we also provide a set of load-balanced robust API Services that can be used to either build decentralized applications or to serve as data feeds for Ethereum Blockchain information.

Beyond Ethereum, Team Etherscan also powers block explorers for many other blockchain networks, including Base, BNB Chain, Polygon, Arbitrum, Solana, and more, through our Explorer as a Service (EaaS) solution.