Factom Realtime Explorer

The first realtime explorer for Factom Blockchain

De Facto
De Facto
6 min readJun 18, 2020

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https://explorer.factom.pro

What is Realtime Explorer?

Factom blocks are 10 minutes long and similar to Bitcoin have different levels of confirmation. Without going into too much detail, when your transaction is successful, that means it was recognized but is not confirmed. Once the 10-minute block is over your transaction is confirmed.

Regular Factom explorers fetch only confirmed blocks, transactions, chains, and entries, so you had to wait from several to 10 minutes before seeing your freshly created chain, entry, or factoid transaction in explorer.

With Factom Realtime Explorer all chains, entries, and transactions are caught up within 1–2 seconds — that means you don’t need to wait for block confirmation, you can see or share your transactions or data entries instantly after submission to the network.

Features

Additionally, Factom Realtime Explorer has significantly improved performance and a lot of usability features:

1. Realtime entries, chains, factoid transactions

All data, submitted to Factom Blockchain, is available in Realtime Explorer instantly — in 1–2 seconds after the submission. You’re able to share your data entry or transaction — entry’s content and extIDs and factoid tx’s inputs/outputs are shown even if they are pending!

Pending entry

Statuses of entries, chains, and factoid transactions are updated automatically— you don’t need to refresh the page!

Factoid Transaction automatic status update

2. Search chains by ExtIDs

Factom Realtime Explorer allows you to search chains by their External IDs. (ExtIDs in Factom Blockchain are intended to provide any sort of tagging information for Chains and Entries, that applications may find useful).

Chains with External ID “Factom PRO”

Additionally, you can share your search results:

3. Search by all hashes

Search form

The Explorer can search for data by block height, address, and almost every possible hash on the blockchain:

  • transactions (factoid txid)
  • entries (entry hash)
  • chains (chain id)
  • directory blocks (dblock keymr)
  • factoid blocks (fblock keymr)
  • entry blocks (eblock keymr)
  • entry credit blocks (ecblock keymr)
  • admin blocks (ablock lookup hash)
  • pending entries (entry hash)
  • pending chains (chain id)
  • pending transactions (factoid txid)

4. Fully responsive design

Explorer has a responsive design and looks great on any devices: computers, tablets, and mobile phones.

Responsive design

5. Explore huge chains

Factom Realtime Explorer is the only one Factom explorer that allows you to explore big chains’ entries — e.g. PegNet Oracle Price Records chain (6.5 mln entries at the moment of writing).

6. Custom Pages sizes

Manage number of visible rows while navigating through large massive of data — works for all views: dblocks, chains, entries, entry blocks, entry commit blocks, factoid txs inputs/outputs.

7. Copyable hashes and external IDs

Copy hash of any block, entry, chain, or transaction by click. Click External IDs and Content of chains and entries by click.

Copyable hashes and external IDs

8. Clickable External IDs

Switch between ASCII/Base64/Hex encoding of External IDs by click.

Switching between encodings of External IDs

9. External IDs in Directory Block & Chain views

Explorer displays External IDs of Chains (in Directory Block view) and Entries (in Chain view) for better usability.

Entries of Chain with External IDs
Entry Blocks of DBlock with External IDs

10. Blockchain Hints

Don’t know what is Admin Block, KeyMR, or Exchange Rate? No problem, all special terms have hints by hover/click!

Block Height hint

11. Filtering Entry Credit transactions by commit type, entry hash, paying address

You can easily filter and sort Entry Credit transactions, stored into Entry Credit blocks.

Entry Commits of EC Block submitted by EC24BkzZGQKwkmN8NJ6ZxocV1hTkYqygDcCXbaDNEJTSFeyqxkK8

12. Filtering Factoid transactions by type

With Factom Realtime Explorer you can filter Factoid transactions by type.

Outgoing FCT transactions of the address

13. Coinbase transactions

Coinbase transactions create new Factoids (FCT) — a native coin of the Factom Blockchain. In Realtime Explorer this transactions are marked with coin badge.

Coinbase transaction
Coinbase transaction is marked in Transaction list of the Factoid address

14. Human-readable Exchange Rate

Exchange Rate is used for FCT → EC conversions to determine how many Entry Credits will be created from the burn of one FCT.

Factom Realtime Explorer displays this information in clear human-readable format.

Exchange Rate in human readable format

15. JSON formatting of Entry Content

If Factom Entry Content contains JSON string, Explorer displays it in human readable format (but you can switch to ASCII if you want though).

Entry Content

16. Emoji and non-latin characters support

Factom Realtime Explorer supports emojis and non-latin characters in External IDs 🥰 (search by emojis works too!)

17. Dynamic page titles

Each page of Realtime Explorer has dynamic title, that makes navigation through browser history easier and more comfortable.

Google Chrome history

18. Fast navigation across sub-blocks

Explorer allows to navigate between Factoid, Admin, and Entry Blocks.

Navigation between Factoid Blocks

19. Icons for intuitive navigation

Each object on the blockchain — entry, chain, directory block, entry block, transactions, etc. — has own recognizable icon for intuitive navigation.

Icons

20. Display all Entry Blocks of the Entry

If the same Factom Entry contained into multiple Entry Blocks, they are all visible on the Entry page.

Entry contained into multiple Entry Blocks

21. Factom Blockchain Stats

On the frontpage of Explorer you can always find realtime stats of Factom Blockchain usage: numbers of entries, active chains, and factoid transactions within latest 7 days (1008 blocks).

Factom Blockchain Stats on frontpage

22. High Redundancy

Factom Realtime Explorer is connected to Factom Open Node — a public, decentralized, load balanced factomd-node which provides an API to interact with the Factom blockchain protocol.

Factom Open Node has decentralized monitoring and the uptime close to 100%, and we bring this redundancy to the Factom Realtime Explorer.

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