Exploring Blockchain Data with Alethio
Alethio’s plug-in based Block Explorer emphasizes user interface, visualizations, & data science to help make Ethereum more transparent & accessible
The novelty of blockchain data storage renders most users unable to efficiently access, read, and analyze information on mainnets and private chains. Additionally, the sheer amount of data stored and transacted on blockchain ledgers means keeping up with data analysis is growing exponentially more difficult. This month alone (June 2019), the Ethereum network processed an average of 840,000 transactions every day. In January 2018, the network processed an all time high of 1.35 million transactions in one day. The result is an intriguing paradox — where the acclaimed data transparency, order, and immutability of public blockchains is actually quite obfuscated (currently) by the sheer difficulty of accessing and understanding that information.
Enter Alethio.
Alethio’s platform allows users to visualize, interpret, and react to blockchain data in real time. We do not require users to wait for an arbitrary number of confirmations to retrieve access to data. Our data pipeline keeps track of blockchain growth and changes as they happen, so you get access to the most recent activity as soon as it takes place. Real-time reliability allows you to react as quickly as possible to on-chain events.
Our modular platform integrates a number of tools — including a block explorer, a monitoring tool & a reporting tool — that emphasize user experience, custom insights, and meaningful data visualizations. Alethio also offers direct access to its data engine via a series of APIs (recently announced last week!). Our platform is also fully deployable on private or permissioned Ethereum-based blockchain networks for enterprise clients.
Our Block Explorer exists as the foundation of the Alethio platform. As the first of a three-part series covering the core elements of the Alethio platform (Reporting, Monitoring, & the Alethio Explorer), the Alethio team is very excited to share a deeper dive into our powerful, UI-focused Block Explorer. Let’s dive in & take a closer look some of its key features, including some very exciting recent updates:
- Robust, UI-focused visualizations: Alethio’s block explorer generates original visualizations about on-chain events so users can map out the account interactions generated by a transaction and the contract messages triggered by a contract execution — all with the click of a button, View graph. Check out this video for more on our smart contract graph views!
- Interactive External Accounts & Smart Contract pages: In addition to the standard information about an account, Alethio allows you to view the evolution of an account balance in the past 30 days (broken down by token holdings), review source codes, ABIs, and query different functions of a contract to retrieve accurate information.
- Elastic Search: Easily search Ethereum through our elastic search functionality. Regardless if you only know the name of a token or an account alias, our blockchain explorer helps you easily find the data you are searching for. Check out elastic search below:
- Customizable plug-in system: Our Alethio Explorer has been developed based on a plug-in system. Each component can be detached and adapted to specific user needs (e.g., private blockchains, side-chain-specific metrics). The plug-in system’s lightweight structure allows requirements to be easily implemented through configurable settings or through an admin interface in a one-click installation process. In the future, users will be easily able to add their own use case specific plug-ins & add modules to their custom explorer page.
- Active Smart Contract security monitoring: Alethio has integrated a new “security and protection” service powered by MythX — a security analysis API for Ethereum smart contracts — and has scanned 1.45M contracts on mainnet. The block explorer allows users to see which contracts have been scanned by MythX, review those results, and request that any other contract be scanned, with results available in a matter of minutes. See the video below for an example of security monitoring with MythX.
- Web3 Social Identity Integration: By partnering with identity platform 3Box, you can how share and see web3 social identities directly on Alethio’s block explorer. Read more about the partnership and social identities here.
A relentless focus on ensuring data consistency
Data integrity & consistency are absolutely critical to our platform. To this end, we have developed Coriolis. Coriolis operates as an ongoing pipeline supervisor, actively ensuring we provide consistent, up-to-date and reorg-proof information. Whenever an issue is detected in the pipeline, Coriolis triggers its self-healing mechanisms & fixes them without manual intervention.
Complementary to Coriolis, we have also developed a suite of integrity validators baked directly into the pipeline to further ensure that the data presented is complete and correct. We will be publishing more information on Coriolis & these other tools in coming posts.
The road ahead
We’re looking forward to engaging the community & evolving our platform to better address blockchain data & analytics needs. In the near term, we plan to:
- Expand the number testnets supported. Right now our blockchain explorer is available on main network and on Goerli. We are working to set up everything on Rinkeby, Kovan and Ropsten. In the meantime, our Lite Explorer is readily available on any testnet today!
- Continue to enable the rapid deployability of our platform on a growing number of sidechains & Layer 2 solutions. We successfully deployed the entire pipeline on xDai Chain at EtherealNY in May.
- Integrate a help system that allows users who are not familiar with blockchain terminology to onboard themselves, learn more, and use the explorer to its maximum potential.
- For those interested, allow users to register account details through our platform. Account owners would be able to submit to our platform their contract source code, ABIs, contract alias and have the metadata visible in our explorer.
Please keep an eye out for upcoming pieces on the other key elements of our platform — Monitoring & Reporting! These tools, along with our API & EthStats.io are easily accessible via aleth.io. Take them for a spin & let us know what you think!
Stay in touch
Questions? Feedback? Drop us a note at support@aleth.io — we’d love to hear back from you!
Website: aleth.io
Follow us on Twitter: @AlethioEthstats
Interested in exploring an integration or getting early access to premium versions of our tools? Reach out to partnerships@aleth.io for more information.
