height 23699 of 23699 on the network. 9 peer(s) connected, 77 in its peer directory; 995 block(s) followed and 825 pulled in by sync since this follower started. Caught up: this follower holds every block any peer has claimed, so every panel below is the whole chain. Genesis 1cf8655125cc1bbb…, producers genesis.
What this follower is, locally
Following 7 seed(s) — their addresses are not published here, for the reason the peer table gives. Its store is held under its own Cerberus lease — no other node’s store is opened, touched or stopped.
What is a block explorer?
A blockchain is a log. Every few seconds a producer gathers the signed records it has been handed, checks each one against the rules, seals them into a block, and attaches that block to the block before it by including a hash of it. Change anything in an old block and every hash after it stops matching, which is what makes the log append-only in practice rather than by permission.
A node is a machine that holds that log and has verified every block in it for itself. A block explorer is a read-only window onto what a node holds. It is not a separate database and not an authority: it is the chain, rendered for a person instead of for a program.
What it is for
Almost everybody arriving at an explorer is asking one of four questions.
- Did this settle? You sent something and want to know whether a block carries it. Paste the transaction id.
- What is this identifier? Somebody gave you an address, a name or a hash and you want to know what is behind it.
- Is this chain real and moving? How many blocks, sealed how long ago, agreed by how many participants.
- Is this contract what it claims? What code is deployed, what it has been called with, and whether the deployed bytes match a source anybody can read.
An explorer answers all four without an account, because the answers are public: a chain’s whole premise is that anybody can check it.
What it cannot do
More useful than the list above, and usually missing from it.
- It cannot move anything. This surface holds a view of the chain with no method on it capable of a change, answers two HTTP verbs, and never reads a request body. There is no key here. Anything that asks you to approve a transaction on an explorer is not the explorer.
- It cannot show you what was never submitted. A record that was never broadcast is not missing from the chain; it was never in it.
- It cannot see further than the node under it. If that node is still syncing, a block it has not reached is absent from these pages and present on the network. That is why the banner at the top of every page says what the node is and how far it has got.
- It cannot tell you a transaction was a good idea. A settled payment to the wrong name is a settled payment. An explorer reports; it does not reverse.
- It cannot make a name trustworthy. That a domain exists on the chain says a holder registered it. It says nothing about who they are.
The words you will meet on these pages
- Block
- A batch of records, sealed and attached to the one before it. Identified by its height — how many blocks precede it — and by its hash.
- Transaction
- One signed instruction. It is pending while it waits in the mempool and sealed once a block carries it. Pending is not paid.
- Mempool
- The queue of transactions no block carries yet. It is bounded, and this surface says what the bound is rather than implying the queue is infinite.
- Finality
- Sealing puts a block at the head. Finalised means enough of the network has agreed that it will not be reorganised away. The gap between the two is drawn on every page that shows a height, because it is the difference between probably and settled.
- State root
- One hash summarising the whole state after a block. Two nodes that agree on it agree on every balance, which is how disagreement is detected rather than argued about.
- Address
- Where value sits. On this chain it is usually reached through a readable STR.domain, and the domain is what a person types.
- Attestation
- A participant’s signature that it saw and accepted a block. Counting them is how finality is decided.
- Producer
- A participant permitted to seal at the head. This chain calls the roll of them the Einherjar; the roll shows who is on it and why.
How to tell an honest explorer from a confident one
Every explorer shows a height. The ones worth trusting also show you how they got it.
- It says which chain it is on, and proves it with a genesis hash rather than with a name in the masthead. A page wearing the right name over the wrong chain is the failure that matters most and the easiest one to miss.
- It says how much of the chain it holds, and whether anything has confirmed that is the whole of it.
- It says unknown where it could not measure, with a reason, instead of printing a zero. A zero and an absence look identical and mean opposite things.
- It bounds every list and states the bound, so a page of 25 rows is not mistaken for the whole collection.
- It fetches nothing from anywhere else. A page assembled from third party scripts can be changed by somebody who does not run the chain.
Those are the five rules this surface is built on. The knowledge base says how each one shows up on a page, and Network status is where you can see them all at once.