CodeChain Explorer

CodeChain opened its first testnet, codenamed ‘Husky’. CodeChain also provides CodeChain Explorer, allowing users to visually observe Husky’s data. A block explorer is an essential tool for blockchains. Without explorers, users would have no idea whether transactions were successful or what their accounts’ current balance is. In fact, users wouldn’t even know if the blockchain is actually running without personally querying the blockchain.

CodeChain Explorer portrays CodeChain network’s data through graphs and images, and also enables users to check the node’s connection status and versions. Outside of visually portraying data, CodeChain Explorer also provides a search engine that enables users to search for the asset’s name, hash, address, and other useful information.

What makes CodeChain Explorer unique?

CodeChain Explorer allows you to explore all ongoing activity on the CodeChain network, just like any other blockchains. However, in addition to these basic functions, CodeChain Explorer was designed to accommodate for the users’ convenience depending on different situations.

The most important aspect was to allow quick access to vital information that users need. However, if users want even more specific data, then they can also access those data as well. Let’s take a look at the difference between CodeChain Explorer and other explorers out there.

Providing visual information

CodeChain’s parcel and transaction types are divided according to what kind of actions they’ve executed. Many explorers provide very simplified and limited visual information, or provide simple textual information. However, this part seemed to be very lacking. Thus, CodeChain Explorer was designed to visualize brief information so that users do not have to read detailed information in order to figure out what each individual transactions and parcels are about.

In addition, the details of the block and the parcel reveal information such as how many of which types of parcels were included in that block, or what types of transactions were included in which parcel. All of this information can be seen within a glance, due to everything being well visually represented.

Blockchain Explorer is a massive site with huge loads of data, which led us to believe that it would be nice to have charts that give information about current situations with a single glance. As a result, CodeChain Explorer provides a visualization chart based on the information of the block, parcel, and transaction that occurred within a week. This chart is displayed at the top of the homepage, which allows users to check the current status of the CodeChain network. We are currently planning on providing more than just simple information, and include various topics into a chart, so stay tuned.

All my assets at a glance

CodeChain provides an asset list on the address page so that users can view the CCC, as well as other various assets, that they own in a single glance. In addition, it links to a page where users can view detailed information about each individual asset. All of the assets are displayed with the names or images specified by the publisher, so users can easily see which items are what without staring too long at the hash.

If there exists a game item trading service running on CodeChain, one can guess information such as which game a particular address plays, or which item he/she trades. This applies to not only games, but also services and tokens. However, we decided not to add too much summary information on the details page. Such summaries may actually interfere with users’ inferences.

Fun

We were dissatisfied with the fact that existing explorers focused only on providing information. Consequently, CodeChain Explorer tried to make pages fun with bright and diverse colors. Parcels and transactions were given color codes depending on their types, which gave rise to a form of identity. Furthermore, the website itself was designed to have a good balance of color usage. There are hidden characters that appear in certain situations, excluding our cute husky for navigation. Try to discover them!

Conclusion

CodeChain Explorer is open source and can be installed through GitHub. Furthermore, with the addition of various functions to CodeChain, the Explorer will be continued to be updated as well. If you have a feature that you want, you can participate in the CodeChain Explorer development directly through GitHub.

Currently, CodeChain is running on two testnets: Husky using Cuckoo Cycle (PoW) as the consensus algorithm and Saluki using PoA. Husky can participate directly as a miner; however, in the case of Saluki, the blocks are instantly mined, so if you are creating an application with CodeChain, you can use Saluki without wait times for mining.

You can find the links to the two testnets below.

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Husky Explorer: https://husky.codechain.io/explorer

Saluki Explorer: https://saluki.codechain.io/explorer

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