Welcome, Crypto Dummies!
This substack focuses on educating those who know nothing about crypto and blockchain technology.
It can be intimidating entering the space for the first time, to be fully prepared, you need to know what tools are available at your disposal.
Today we’ll go over Etherscan.
This was a topic requested in the past, and it’s imperative to understand what you can do with it, and how to take full advantage of its use cases.
So what is Etherscan?
Etherscan is a block explorer and analytics platform. Perhaps one of the most popular and trusted tools used to navigate through public data on the Ethereum blockchain.
We know that all transactions on the network are published on a distributed ledger. Etherscan allows you to explore all the public on-chain data.
This includes transaction history, wallet addresses, smart contracts, suspicious activity, and much much more.
Learning how to navigate through Etherscan, you will get a better understanding of how you interact with the blockchain, and learn how to catch suspicious behavior and sift through projects.
It’s no surprise that in this space there are tons of new protocols and tokens launching every day, it’s imperative to educate yourself and understand the tools at your disposal to conquer the decentralized universe.
Okay cool, so how do I use it?
To start, the most basic functions can be found right on the home page.
Ether Price
Market cap
Average gas price
Mining Hash rate
Transaction history
There is also a list of the most recent blocks and transactions right underneath.
Let’s say you want to look up the price of another asset on Ethereum, let us use FTM (Fantom) as an example.
To view the on-chain metrics for the FTM token you’ll need the contract address or ticker. (Don’t worry you can also type in “Fantom” and find this information.)
Head over to the homepage, and in the search bar type in the ticker (FTM) or the contract address.
Here we can see all the information regarding the FTM token.
At the top, we have the basic information including:
Price (in USD)
Max Total Supply
Number of Token Holders
Number of Token transfers
Contract address
Official website
Through the various tabs at the bottom, we can view the specific detail regarding:
All Token transfers (including how many tokens were transferred, and the wallet that initiated the transfer.)
All FTM holders including DeFi protocols, exchanges, and wallets.
Information about the token includes an overview, Profitability/Loss, Market data, and specifics about the ICO.
Exchanges the token is listed on.
Trades made on Decentralized Exchanges
Contract information that allows you to read the contract or write the contract. [Read Contract] shows you the general contract information, while [Write Contract] allows you to interact with the contract directly. By clicking [Connect to Web3] you can connect your Metamask wallet to the contract directly. (This is especially handy for dApps that are unavailable due to a website outage or technical difficulties. You can try to interact with the smart contract without using the dApp’s API)
Analytics regarding Token contract overview, and historical price in relation to Ether.
The same can be done for individual wallets. Using the wallet address you can view all data regarding that specific wallet. You will be able to see :
balances of that wallet
List of other tokens that are stored
Transaction history of contract interactions and swaps
Analytics
Let’s take one more look at the analytics.
Here we can see all the analytical data regarding a specific wallet address.
In this case wallet 0xf09.
We can see all the information regarding Ether balance, transactions, Transaction fees paid, Ether transfer, and token transfers.
We can also see the highest balance of Ether and the lowest balance of Ether recorded on the blockchain regarding this wallet.
What else can I do with Etherscan?
At the top right-hand corner, located just underneath the search bar, you can find some quick tabs for easy access to popular functions of Etherscan.
Through the [Blockchain] Tab we can:
View Confirmed Transactions
View Pending Transactions
View Contract Internal Transactions
View Confirmed Blocks
Forked Blocks
Uncle (Omer) Blocks
Top Accounts
Verified Contracts
[Tokens] gives us an overview of:
The top ERC20 (Ethereum Standard) Tokens
ERC20 Token Transfers
ERC721 (Ethereum NFT standard) Top Tokens
ERC721Transfers
ERC1155(Ethereum Multi-token Standard) Top Tokens
ERC1155 Transfers
Side note: More on ERC20, ERC721, and ERC1155 in a future post. Stay Tuned!
In our [Resources] tab, we can view:
Charts and Statistics for
Market Data
Blockchain Data
Dashboards
Network Data
Top Statistics
Ethereum Name Service Data
Contracts Data
Top statistics for the past 24 hours, 3 Days, and 7 Days. This includes top transactions, tokens, Network data, and Miner data.
Developer API’s to build dApps
A Directory with information regarding
Exchanges
Wallets
Listings and Prices
News and Forums
Events
Learning Resources
Smart Contracts
Mining
And extra resources on careers, grants, and tools.
Under [More] we can find category-specific resources for Developers, Decentralized Finance, On-chain exploration, and various other tools.
Wrapping it all up:
Etherscan is arguably one of the most valuable tools within the Ethereum network and the blockchain space as a whole. As the space matures and grows, new chains launch, and new opportunities to build, invest and interact reveal themselves. All chains have an Etherscan equivalent, just as the Binance Smart Chain has bscscan.com, Fantom has ftmscan.com, and so on for all the new chains we have recently seen emerge.
Note: Don’t worry, we know you’re new to this space. We’ll cover different chains and L1s and L2s in a future post.
Today we have broken down Etherscan to its core. A block explorer and on-chain analytics platform that is crucial to familiarize yourself with. Understanding in full detail all the tools available to you, and how to navigate them, brings you one step closer to going from Crypto Dummy to Crypto Novice.
That’s all for today Crypto Dummies!
Next week we’ll touch back on Part 2 of IPFS!
Also, what about a series about beginner forensics on the blockchain. Following money of known scammers & rugz so we can avoid these ppl like the plague. Love the content glad I subscribed.
This is what I’m talking about! Been looking for something like this for a while.