What is a blockchain explorer?

Everything on a public chain is recorded, but raw chain data is close to unreadable. Explorers index it and put a search box on top. Paste an address, a transaction hash or a token contract and you get balances, transfers, contract code and events. Etherscan and its sister sites cover many EVM chains, Blockscout is an open-source explorer that lots of networks run themselves, and Solscan and the Solana Explorer serve Solana.

This is how most people check things. You can confirm a payment arrived, see whether a token contract is verified, find who holds the biggest slice of supply or follow the money after a hack. Explorers read public data, so they need no account and no wallet connection.

Explorers are data providers too. Blockscout offers APIs that apps call to fetch balances and token lists for an address. When an explorer's indexer falls behind, every app leaning on it shows stale numbers, and the app usually takes the blame.

Picture a friend who swears they sent you USDC on Base, and nothing arrived. You search the transaction hash and see it went out on Ethereum mainnet. Your Base balance never had a chance.

Also called: block explorer, explorer.

EVM portfolios in Cashboard read public address data through Blockscout, and the widget shows which source answered. Cashboard Desktop can swap the public Blockscout instance for a custom or Pro endpoint. Cashboard is not an explorer. It shows what an address holds, not its transaction history or contract code.

• Portfolio
• Chain status

• Public address
• Token contract address
• Block height
• RPC endpoint