Why Block Explorers are key to building a transparent, trustless world with Blockchain
Blockchain has the power to usher in a new era of transparency, creating a trustless world that rewards good behaviour by leaving nothing hidden in the shadows.
Transparency, by a long way, is the best regulator of behaviour, and it’s made possible on blockchains with block explorer tools like Etherscan for Ethereum and the newly launched Aventus Network Block Explorer.
A transparent world is a better world
In a blockchain world with open access to block explorers, businesses will compete on transparency. The greater their transparency, the greater their appeal to investors and customers. There will be less need for costly, inefficient regulations that add the burden of manual processes.
In this new transparent world, there is greater access to reliable information, creating more efficient markets that better determine the market price and quality of goods and services. Business valuations can be accurately made taking into account a company’s capacity to manage its assets, debt, and equity, with investors having clear insight and oversight of everything from supply chain management to the management of assets.
Security tokens will represent everything from ownership of shares and art to real estate, giving owners and investors immutable oversight of ownership and transaction history. Recorded on a blockchain, all tokens and transactions, including the underlying assets they represent, are transparent and visible to anyone.
To make this transparent world possible, we need Block Explorers.
What is a Block Explorer?
Each activity on a blockchain is its own transaction. Transactions are combined into blocks in a chain and recorded on the digital ledger. A block explorer is a search function tool, like a blockchain search engine, that lets every participant on a blockchain search for transaction information on that chain.
The recording of blocks, and the transactions contained therein, are immutable and visible to anyone, creating a transparent, trustless world.
A common block explorer many blockchain enthusiasts have used is Etherscan — the Ethereum block explorer that lets anyone explore the Ethereum blockchain for transactions, addresses, tokens, and prices. When you make a transaction on Ethereum, you can immediately check its status and your ownership of assets is directly linked to your address, provable to anyone with a simple search.
Similarly to Etherscan, the Aventus Network (AvN) has just introduced its own block explorer on its own network that lets businesses and decentralised platforms build on Ethereum without the typical limitations of scale, speed, and cost.
The Aventus Network Block Explorer acts as a window into the AvN blockchain and allows users to see all historical transaction data and blocks as they are created and validated.
It also allows Aventus Validators to see the transactions fees they are earning from staking the Aventus Token to AvN nodes.
Transparency drives blockchain adoption
Transparency drives value by virtue of building trust between parties in an ecosystem. If suppliers and employees and customers and regulators can see what you’re doing, they have no reason not to trust you. In most cases therefore, where good behaviour is the norm, businesses are incentivised to adopt blockchain to highlight the transparency of their processes.
As an example, in agriculture, discerning consumers are more likely to choose products from farms using blockchain as they can trace the crop from field to fork. This is true in any industry where there is a flow of goods and services.
In finance, blockchain lets an unlimited number of parties transact privately and securely without the need of central intermediaries. The transparency of blockchain lets currency move instantly across borders without having to pass through central banks and clearing houses — each that take their cut. A bank can make better lending decisions by viewing all historical data and verify accuracy without the need for slow, costly audits and reviews.
In any business with a supply chain, blockchain lets parties protect their businesses against would-be malicious actors as, after all, people tend to behave better when they’re being watched.
As early adopters gain the competitive advantage of transparency and the reduced costs of transactions, competition will be forced to follow, creating a virtuous cycle of transparency and blockchain adoption.
How blockchain builds transparency
On a blockchain, transactions and participants each have unique identifiers or signatures that they use to add a block to a chain. As tokens pass from to another, every step is recorded.
Blockchain has increased value from the fact it is able to immutably record transaction data and details not typically recorded in a traditional ledger system. Each block in a chain is encrypted and distributed among all participants, each with their own copy of the ledger.
This creates an immutable audit trail. As a result, blockchain eliminates unwanted behaviour, since every participant has their own copy of truth in the form of their own ledger. No participant can edit recorded data because it would mean having to edit all subsequent blocks on every shared copy of the ledger on the chain.
Imagine, for example, that an accountant, cooking the books, had to make the same changes to hundreds, thousands, or even millions of different ledgers, all at the same time. In a world where any single ledger could be the smoking gun, such an accountant with malicious intentions might think twice.
What’s more, many blockchain functions can be automated with smart contracts, reducing error and cost further. When a contractual obligation is met, for example, when the grain is sent and verified by the manufacturer, payment is automatically unlocked. Supplier relationships strengthen as they are no longer based on trust but blockchain technology that replaces the need for trust.
Conclusion
The fact is that there are countless benefits of blockchain to business. At the core of them all are transparency and efficiency, that creates a world in which incentives align so that those who behave best are more likely to win.
Within the Aventus Network ecosystem, the Aventus Block Explorer lets anyone visit the Aventus website to see a high-level view of network activity or dig deep and perform granular searches on specific addresses or transaction hashes. Anyone can watch as transactions are confirmed between accounts, audit user payments, monitor fees spent, and rewards earned for Validators.
It’s the next step in our quest to deliver the most transparent experience to ensure AvN users can get the most out of blockchain.
Check out the Aventus Block Explorer here.
About the author & CTA
An alumnus of Imperial College, London, Alan Vey is co-Founder and CEO of Aventus Network Services, a second-layer blockchain protocol that lets businesses and decentralised protocols build on Ethereum without the typical limitations of scale, speed, and cost. For more information, visit aventus.io.
