Block Explorers 101: Understanding the Basics

The decentralised nature of cryptocurrencies with blockchain technology ensures security and verifiable ownership, allowing individuals to conduct verifiable transactions without the need for intermediaries such as banks or brokers.

With the rise of Decentralised Finance (DeFi), understanding how to read a block explorer is an important skill to have — this means you can verify your blockchain transaction history and balances all by yourself.

Not sure how many tokens you have received from a trade executed on a Decentralised Exchange (DEX)? Or unsure of whether your friend has sent you a payment as promised? You can check the validity of these transactions directly on the blockchain — having this knowledge helps you to spot suspicious blockchain activity on your wallet and keep you SAFU! Good thing is that you will get exactly what you see while trading on Bebop with minimal risk since Bebop does not hold custody of user funds.

Getting Started with Block Explorers

Block explorers serve as the gateway for anyone to access and examine the complete record of all transactions that have occurred on a specific blockchain. There are different blockchain explorers for popular blockchains — Etherscan is widely used for Ethereum, while Polygonscan is used for Polygon and there’s Arbiscan for Arbitrum. These provide a wealth of information to everyone, without any requirement to sign-up for an account.

Think of block explorers as a portal to easily access receipts for all transactions and records of all existing addresses, such as wallet accounts and smart contracts. You can search for or browse to individual records and view detailed information such as current balances for an account or sender and recipient details for a transfer transaction.

Understanding Transaction Details

In this guide, we’ll be using Etherscan to understand Ethereum transaction details, but don’t worry, as most blockchain explorers are fundamentally similar.

Let’s say you are executing a trade on Bebop (ETH network), the transaction hash link will be shown to you on Bebop and in your wallet.

Clicking on the “View Transaction” will redirect you to Etherscan page with your transaction details just like the screenshot below.

Here’s what we can learn about the transaction:

Transaction hash: The unique identifier of the transaction using a string of numbers and letters.

Status: Indication whether the transaction was successful, is in progress or failed.

Block: The block number of the transaction that was included in — you can click on it to understand the blocks details and fees or all transactions included in the block as well.

Timestamp: The timestamp of the block for the transaction and how long it took for the blocks to be confirmed.

From: The wallet address that executed the transaction; this is not the recipient’s wallet for trades executed on Bebop since Bebop utilises RFQ method and executes transactions on behalf to prevent MEV attacks.

Interact With (To): The smart contract that was interacted with — Bebop’s smart contracts are labelled on block explorers.

ERC-20 Tokens Transferred: The number and dollar value of ERC-20 tokens being transferred between recipient address and Bebop’s wallet.

Value: The amount of native ETH token spent if it’s a wrapping or wallet-to-wallet transaction.

💡Tip: You can see the US dollar value of each token transferred in brackets. This is the value as of today’s prices. To get the USD value as of the day of the transaction, you need to click on it. Crypto markets volatility may mean these numbers may be quite different from one another!

Transaction fee: Fees paid in native network token for executing transaction; Bebop trades have network fees included in trade so users do not need to pay fees with native tokens

Gas price: The cost per unit of gas for the transaction

Now, let’s take a look at another example where you’ve just wrapped some ETH into WETH. While we provide quick access to wrapping on Bebop, this happens via the standard contracts that were not developed by Bebop.

Most of the data displayed are the same with the previous example except for:

Transaction action: Shows the action of wrapping 0.05 Ether into 0.05 Wrapped Ether

From: The wallet recipient address that executed the transaction

To: The smart contract that was interacted with — it’s a Wrapped Ether smart contract in this case

Value: The amount and dollar value of ETH being transferred for the transaction

There are more complex transactions on blockchains but this basic knowledge should be a good start for you to understand transaction details — as long as you have the transaction hash (TXID), you can just copy and paste it in any supported block explorer for lookup.

Viewing Wallet and Transaction History

Checking your wallet balances and transaction history is a good habit to protect yourselves from any malicious or unauthorised transactions.

You can check the wallet history by pasting any wallet addresses into Etherscan’s Search function.

ETH Balance: The total balance of ETH (or any native token on blockchain) available in wallet address.

ETH Value: The US dollar value of ETH balance.

💡Tip: You can change the currency settings under “Site Settings”!

Token Holdings: The US dollar value and total balance of ERC-20 tokens available in wallet address — you can click on this to further breakdown.

Private Name Tags: If you create your own (free) login for the block explorer, you can create private tags for any wallets or transactions for ease of reference.

Multichain addresses: You can view the same wallet address in other EVM compatible blockchains’ block explorer.

At the bottom of the page, we can see the list of past transactions associated with the address with different tabs:

Transactions: Shows transactions where transfer of ETH via simple smart contract functions happen such as wrapping, wallet-to-wallet transfer or token approvals.

Internal Transactions: Shows transactions triggered by specific smart contracts function logic such as bridging, depositing, executing trades, staking, etc.

Token Transfers (ERC-20): Shows transactions with transfers of ERC-20 tokens. These can be direct transfer or transfers resulting from Bebop trades.

Try it out with Bebop

With this comprehensive guide on reading a block explorer, you can now delve into the specifics of any trades that you’ve made 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.

Block explorers offer other additional features on top of what we’ve just discussed — learn more about different tips & tricks here!

In the mean time, follow our announcements on Twitter and join our Discord to stay connected with the community! 😉