Block Explorers 101: Tips & Tricks
In our first part of Block Explorers 101 article, we talked about how you can make use of block explorers like Etherscan to view transaction details or track wallet balance and transaction history that have occurred on a specific blockchain, Ethereum in this case.
Now that you have a better understanding on navigating block explorers like Etherscan, there are many other features available on Etherscan for you to discover and explore. In this article, we will explain and demonstrate how you can leverage these features for a greater on-chain experience.
Table of Contents
Viewing a Smart Contract
Smart contracts information can be viewed by looking up on Etherscan as well — this is useful for users to verify the authenticity of a smart contract and double-check that you’re sending funds to the correct contract.
For this example, we will use Bebop’s current smart contract address: 0xBeb09beB09e95E6FEBf0d6EEb1d0D46d1013CC3C
You can immediately see the name tag titled Bebop: Settlement approved by Etherscan team, together with verified source code ✅ — this information lets you know that the you’re interacting with the legitimate Bebop smart contract. We’re available on Polygon and Arbitrum as well as you can see from multichain addresses displayed.
You can also see the wallet that deployed Bebop’s smart contract under Contract Creator. Other info related such as smart contract’s ETH balance and value are shown too, while sub-tabs below display past transactions, internal transactions and ERC-20 token transfers — relatively similar to what you see on a wallet address.
A big difference between viewing wallet addresses and smart contracts is the Contract tab where you can view our verified contract source code. If you don’t see the green checkmark next to “Contract”, the code hasn’t been verified — so make sure to look for the ✅!
Viewing a Token
While all tokens listed on Bebop are legitimate and verified, it’s important for you to know what tokens you’re interacting with and whether the smart contracts are verified. You can view more details about a token by clicking on the asset link or pasting a smart contract address — for this example, we’re looking at USD Coin (USDC).
Etherscan shows a verified checkmark based on reputation to help users make informed decisions, together with tags such as “ERC-20”, “Centre” and “Stablecoin” associated with the token. You can also check any associated verified links with the token such as website, e-mail, blog, Github, Twitter, Discord, Whitepaper, etc.
Within “Overview”, you can find out the max total supply of USDC available, total number of wallet addresses with USDC and total transfers transacted with USDC on ETH network.
Within “Market”, you can check the dollar value per token, fully diluted market capitalization and circulating supply market capitalization of USDC.
There are different sub tabs below those information for you to check out:
Transfers: Shows all transactions that interacted with USDC token on ETH network
Holders: Shows top 1,000 holders for USDC token on ETH network
Info: Basic information about USDC token submitted
Exchange: List of both Centralised Exchange (CEX) and Decentralised Exchange (DEX) that supports USDC token for trading (data extracted from Coingecko)
DEX Trades: Shows all transactions that has either Buy or Sell interaction with USDC token on ETH network
Contract: Shows the contract source code for the token — verified smart contracts have a ✅ logo as shown in screenshot
Checking Gas Prices
All Ethereum transactions executed require network fees to be paid, just like how a vehicle needs to be filled up with gas to move from point A to point B. Gas fees are calculated by gas price (GWEI) multiplying gas limit.
Gas price (GWEI) can be determined from Etherscan’s Gas Tracker while gas limit is how much gas a user is willing to allocate for the transaction — some wallets like Metamask allow users to manually set gas limit.
As you can see in the screenshot, current GWEI price is estimated at 48 GWEI, the fluctuating gas price (GWEI) is a mechanism put in place to prevent network congestion. Gas fees fluctuate based on supply and demand for the computational power of the network. If there is a lot of congestion, you can expect higher gas fees and vice versa.
Therefore, we recommend you to check Gas Tracker for “traffic update” on the blockchain before executing a transaction so you can save yourself some network fees! 😉
Revoking Token Approvals
Before interacting with any smart contracts, you will be asked for token approval with either custom allowance or unlimited allowance to spend on behalf. While Bebop’s smart contract is verified and verified without holding user funds at any point of time, it’s a good practice to routinely check your wallet for active token allowances to prevent unwanted wallet drains.
Etherscan Token Approval is a great place to view all active token approvals and revoke any unwanted token allowances.
You can check any wallet’s active token approvals but you must connect the wallet as owner to modify token approvals as shown in the screenshot above.
Once connected, you can view all active token approvals with details of transaction hash, last updated date, assets, approved spender or smart contracts and the allowance amount for spend.
Clicking on the “Revoke” button for any assets stated will trigger a transaction to be executed from your wallet, all you have to do after is accept the transaction, pay network fees and voilà — you have successfully revoked token approval for the particular asset after the transaction is completed!
Try it out with Bebop
With this comprehensive guide on reading a block explorer, you can now level up your on-chain experience while trading on bebop.xyz whether it’s on Ethereum, Polygon or Arbitrum network.
You can also review your trade history on Bebop directly as we have a new Activity page — learn more about it here.
In the mean time, follow our announcements on Twitter and join our Discord to stay connected with the community! 😉
