The Future of Blockchain Explorers starts from Avalanche

Condensed ed edited transcript from the May 4th Keynote at Avalanche Summit II

Avascan is the most complete and advanced block explorer for the Avalanche network.

‘Complete’ means that we index every subnet, and ‘advanced’ means that we build features that go beyond what you normally expect from a block explorer.

We think that the ‘block explorer’ naming is not completely suitable for us. To understand what we mean by this, we need to tackle a couple of aspects: first, what a block explorer is and how it works. And second, what’s the history of the block explorer.

This is instrumental in understanding what’s next for the block explorer, and how and why it starts from Avalanche.

What’s a block explorer?

In short, a block explorer is an analytics website that let users view data about one blockchain. There are different types of explorers.

We can categorize most block explorers by saying they’re either a light explorer, or a Full-Index explorer. The basic difference is that the former connects directly to the blockchain node, while the second uses an intermediary software, called the indexer, to store data in a specific way.

Each explorer has some basic functionalities: the light one has at least a basic address dashboard, maybe only showing the amount of gas token held, then it has a transaction tracer and a block viewer. Sometimes, it may even feature a staking page or section and one about the mempool.

This, and much else in full history, is part of the full-index explorer: contract verification and interaction, some other useful developer tools and even some basic financial tools.

Here’s when the Avalanche experience comes in handy: we realized that next gen blockchain networks render some features obsolete, and we need to rethink the block explorer.

For example, the mempool page doesn’t make much sense on a network such as Avalanche: since time-to-finality (i.e. the time it takes for a transaction to be completed and not reversible) is 0.7 seconds on average, this page will be empty 99.9% of the time. What’s the use of a page that’s always empty?

History of the block explorer

The first block explorer that’s still active is most certainly blockchain.info, now blockchain.com, the bitcoin explorer. It was all basic, raw: just a list of latest blocks with indication about how many transactions in them, some general stats and a list of resource links. Notice where the search is: it’s not prominent.

From 2013 to 2015 then, bitcoin gained popularity in what we can call the Bitcoin Forks Era: Litecoin, Dogecoin and other were born during this period. Therefore, the block explorer gained more popularity, and a revamp was needed: the raw UI leaves space to a more friendly UI. Since Bitcoin started to get exchanged, there’s a new Markets page, along with a Charts page to help traders get a sense of the macro. The stats get their own page as well, and a list of transaction comes along, but it’s not prominent. The search bar it’s in the same place, but there’s another one in the top.

From 2015 to 2018 there’s a shift: bitcoin is not the only kid in town, because there’s a new type of blockchain, Ethereum. Etherscan is the most prominent explorer, and it makes blocks and transactions equally important. Transactions are even somewhat important, due to a 14-day transaction volume chart that’s very prominent. The attention moves from blocks (that make more sense in a UTXO-based blockchain) to transactions (that make more sense in an account-based blockchain).

Enter 2019. The 2017 bull run has ended, there’s a bear market. Some applications get into the scene, unlocking what was once called Open Finance (OpenFi), the prototype of current-day DeFi. In the Ethereum block explorer, the attention moves to more financial-focused data: ETH price and Market Cap are more prominent, and the search bar is now the most visible object in the web page. The block explorer has truly become a search engine. This is also when Avascan started, on September 1st, 2020.

In 2021, a new bull run starts, and Ethereum is at its center. But along with it are a lot of next gen blockchain platforms. Avalanche is one of the key players here.

But here’s the catch: every explorer described here has one basic thing in common: it has a single-chain experience. But Avalanche’s not a single-chain platform. It’s a multi-chain platform.

During the first conversations with Emin Gün Sirer when discussing the grant for Avascan, Gun said to us what quickly became our mission at Avascan:

I want to see everything happening on Avalanche in one single place.

This is what drove us from the beginning and what drives us now.

This is what we think is the future, what’s going to be from now on: the Multi-Chain Era. It awaits to be written, and we as Avascan we’re front and center.

We’re the pioneers of the world’s first truly multi-chain explorer. We’re all in on this. We’re called the Google of Avalanche because of this: we’re not just the Google of C-Chain or DFK. We’re the Google of the whole Avalanche network of subnets.

We think that app-chains are the future of blockchain scalability. Avalanche pioneered the concept with subnets in 2020. Hence, we know that the blockchain explorer needs to adapt, from a single-chain experience to an integrated multi-chain one.

That’s exactly why we don’t feel the block explorer naming is suitable for us. It’s because we don’t identify in any of these definitions. But we’re changing this. We don’t think there’s just two types of explorers, but three: that’s the Full Index Ecosystem Explorer.

That’s different from the Full Index Single Chain Explorer, because it aggregates data across app-chains under a single ecosystem network, like Avalanche. It’s not like multi-chain explorers like Blockchair, that has different websites from each blockchain. It doesn’t make much sense to display just DFK data, or just Shrapnel data. They all use the same node, hence they’re in the same network, just different subnetworks. Avascan is the world’s first Full Index Ecosystem Explorer.