What are we actually looking at when we view Etherscan?

Author: Shijiu Jun

With the NFT event of "Love Death" last week, the serious weakness in infrastructure (and user cognition) in the world of WEB3 has evidently become an obstacle for many enthusiasts who want to delve deeper (it’s really frustrating to ask where the NFT is after minting).

So if you have the following doubts, then this article is the guide for you!

• I exported to my own wallet from the exchange, has it arrived?
• The mintNFT transaction is completed, where is my asset?
• It is said that on-chain data is public, how can I extract the full list of holders of Bored Apes?
• I heard there are various peculiar arbitrage bots on-chain, where are they?

On-chain data varies depending on the public chain it is on, and almost every public chain has its own blockchain explorer. Etherscan.io is the entry point for Ethereum.

This article starts from background data to interpret the detailed meanings of blocks/transactions/addresses, combined with examples of Etherscan's extended statistical information, hoping to help everyone further open the door to web3!

1. What can Etherscan do?

All interactions on Ethereum are public, and you can view all related activities using the transaction hash (transaction ID), including tokens, smart contracts, and wallet addresses.

Although Etherscan does not require registration, you can create a personal account to use its additional features. For example, setting up notifications for queued transactions, accessing developer tools, and creating data source alerts.

It's like if you discover Musk's address, you can monitor every transaction he makes.

2. What can't Etherscan do?

Etherscan does not provide Ethereum wallet functionality or private key storage services. Therefore, you cannot use it solely to conduct transactions. If you want to trade or store cryptocurrencies, you need a cryptocurrency wallet, such as Trust Wallet, MetaMask, Math Wallet, or Binance Chain Wallet.

Only by managing private keys with a wallet can you use Etherscan's convenient contract operation features to initiate some basic contract function call transactions. For example, the mint transaction details of last week's "Love Death" NFT can be seen: when Netflix's NFT forgot the business security of web2.

3. What does Etherscan have?

Mainly divided into three categories:

• Basic normative data query entry
• Advanced commonly used data statistical analysis
• Customized interface services for developers

3.1 Public Basic Information

We know that blockchain technology involves executing several transactions, packaging them into blocks, publishing, and recording the ledger. A contract carries customized code in the remark area of a transaction, allowing code logic to be executed in a virtual machine. By recording the original information of each transaction, we can replay them one by one to restore the entire process.

This involves three parts of public information: transactions, blocks, and addresses. These are the three areas in the image below.

The basic information in the middle includes:

• ETHER PRICE: Current ETH to USD exchange rate
• TRANSACTIONS: Total number of transactions
• MED GAS PRICE: Unit price of transaction fees
• MARKET CAP: Total asset market value
• TRANSACTION HISTORY: Total number of transactions per day over the last 14 days
• DIFFICULTY and HASH RATE: Not discussed here

3.2 What is in the transaction details?

Let’s randomly select the latest transaction, and most of the data is self-explanatory.

It's like the entire lifecycle of a delivery:

1. What is the tracking number (Transaction Hash)?
2. Was the delivery successful (Status)?
3. When did the recipient receive it (Timestamp)?
4. Where did it come from (from), and where is it going (to)?
5. Which courier packaged it (block)?
6. What is inside the envelope (value + input data)?
7. What is the postage (Transaction Fee)?

It is worth noting that the to address can be a contract, a user address (EOA), or 0x0, which represents the creation of a new contract (although on Etherscan, it will use the returned contract address as the to position).

There are also some other information entry points above.

log: Represents the sequence of several function calls executed during this transaction and the main parameters.

state: Represents some states of the parties involved in the transaction, rarely used.

comments: Comments, this is a centralized feature, not on-chain data.

3.3 What is in the block details?

Block information is relatively complex and does not have much significance for state analysis.

There are technical parameters, such as block rewards/uncle block rewards/burnt fees, which will not be discussed further.

3.4 What is in the address details?

Note that the information here comes from on-chain data but is actually reorganized by Etherscan.

If you are curious about how to find the various ERC20 tokens accumulated in your address, you can check from the Token list.

If you have purchased an ENS domain name, you can also quickly find your address through the domain name. Here, my address is a nice number generated by my own program (the last four digits are b14c, with a 14).

Below are several types of transaction type archive entries.

Among them, internal Tx refers to internal transactions, which occur when I call a certain contract, and this contract is complex, so it initiates transactions to schedule other contracts to obtain certain return information, with the contract as the from party's transaction being an internal transaction.

Some addresses that have received numerous user complaints + official verification will be marked with a risk label on the right side, a red shield indicating that it may be a phishing contract or an address where funds were transferred after being stolen by a hacker.

There is also an Analytics section, which is a basic analysis report. It can answer more questions, such as:

• The balance changes of a large holder's address, focusing on what NFTs a certain industry KOL has recently purchased.
• The recent transaction volume of a certain contract, reflecting the most basic indicator of the product's popularity behind it.

If this address is a contract, you can also see a contract section.

For example, in the "Love Death" NFT event:

• Analyze its use of 1271 dynamic signature verification technology, which is step 1, looking at the source code.
• Query how many times various types of 1155 protocol NFTs have been minted, status queries are step 2, requiring no gas.
• Executing mint to obtain your own NFT is an initiated transaction, which has a state change and is step 3, requiring gas consumption.

Warning ⚠️: This feature requires ensuring that the smart contract itself has no issues; otherwise, it may still endanger your asset security. It is not recommended for beginners to use.

4. Advanced Statistical Information

Of course, the public nature of on-chain data breaks down many barriers in the web2 industry, which has also given rise to some basic statistical entry points on Etherscan. I have organized them as follows (expanding on the initial image).

The information here is too complex to list, so I will illustrate how to combine this information with examples.

Focus on the movements of certain large holders: Top Accounts.

Focus on the queued transaction queue: Pending Txns.

The queue indicates that it has not yet been packaged. Monitoring this queue is like having a god's eye view to judge what will be sent, while hackers can increase the gas price to have their transactions packaged in advance. Especially during NFT minting, they often get stuck in a block that permits minting.

ERC20 head information list: Anti-phishing, you can also see that there are currently 530,000 contracts that meet ERC20 standards, among which the largest by circulating market value are BNB and USDT, along with information such as the number of holding addresses.

From Charts & Stats, there are numerous data points, and different roles have different focuses.

For example, as a contract technology researcher, one would focus on gas-related information because deploying on-chain consumes a lot of gas, so it is necessary to find a time point with lower gas fees.

If you focus on the status of different public chains, you can pay attention to cross-chain to obtain the TVL (Total Value Locked) of other public chain ecosystems.

If you are still pondering whether this ecosystem is worth researching, you can pay attention to the Ethereum Daily Verified Contracts Chart.

Each contract may represent a product, indicating the overall prosperity of the ecosystem.

5. Customized Information Extraction

Of course, if you have read this far, you must be quite capable. Besides looking at reports, how can you break through the limitations of directly exporting Excel from the webpage, such as extracting the top 10,000 projects by transaction volume in bulk? For example, studying how a certain hacker program profits and how much it earns? You will need to combine the API documentation for customized information extraction.

Detailed development documentation: https://docs.etherscan.io/

Finally, you can obtain information through a simple URL request, such as querying the balance of a specified address:

Usage:

/api?module=account&action=balance&address=0x&tag=latest&apikey=YourApiKeyToken

Response:

{status: "1", message: "OK", result: "1111"}