A walkthrough of Trivechain’s block explorer Part 1: Insight
A block explorer is a tool that common public use to view and audit all blockchain transactions. It provides users with everything that need to know regarding the blockchain, audit transactions history, get to know the addresses balance and detail of the blocks.
A blockchain protocol can have multiple block explorer to further ensure integrity with decentralization. Trivechain has two block explorers at the moment of writing which is Insight & Explorer. The Insight block explorer loads faster but covers only the essence of the native coin, while the explorer includes transactions of TriveAsset. Explorer will be covered in Part 2 as we only focus on Insight in this article.
This article covers the following:
- How to use the Insight Block Explorer (https://insight.trivechain.com/).
- How to read the details of a transaction, address, and block.
- Why do you need a block explorer?
Before we start, this article is for people that have some basic understanding of blockchain. If you do not have any idea about blockchain, you may not fully understand but try your level best to grasp some idea from the article as we try to make it as simple as possible.
Landing Page
On the landing page of Insight, you can see the latest block mined from a mining pool through the process of Proof of Work (PoW) and its details such as age, number of transactions recorded in the block, mining pool that found the block and the size. Once a block is mined and broadcasted to the insight node, you will see the latest block being added. If a user broadcasted a transaction, the insight node receives the message, it will be added to latest transaction before it is recorded in a block.
On the navigation bar, there is an input column that allows users to search for the block by block hash, block by block height, address, or transaction. This is the most commonly used by users of a block explorer.
Block
Block hash works like an “ID” that represents the block. It is calculated by miners putting all block header as the input through the X16Rv2 hashing algorithm. Block hash can also be utilized in use cases that require verifiable randomnesses such as random numbers or deciding the types of equipment in a game.
Let’s have a look at a single block:
The Summary section shows the important information that is presented or derived from the block header.
- Number of Transactions: The number of transactions recorded in this block.
- Height: The index of the block within the blockchain.
- Block Reward: The total new native coin (TRVC) mined from the block that is distributed to miners and master node.
- Timestamp: The digital record of the time when the block is mined.
- Merkle Root: A single hash that is computed from all the transactions in the block.
- Size: The total size of the block.
- Bits: The targeted difficulty that the miner needs to achieve for the block to the considered as part of the blockchain ( in unsigned int 32-bit )
- Difficulty: The targeted difficulty that the miner needs to achieve for the block to the considered as part of the blockchain ( in double-precision float / 64-bit )
- Nonce: Abbreviation of “number only used once”. It is a value adjusted by miners and used in calculating the block hash so that the hash of the block will be less than or equal to the current target of the network.
Transaction
Similar to a block, a transaction has a hash value known as the transaction id.
The data in Summary are:
- Size: The total size of the transaction.
- Fee Rate: The miner fee or transaction fee that the transaction is paying (TRVC per kilobyte)
- Received Time: The time where the transaction is being broadcasted and captured by the block explorer
- Mined Time: The time where the transaction is being added to a block.
- Included in Block: The block that the transaction is recorded in.
- LockTime: This is the earliest block height/time that the transaction can spent or used in another transaction on the blockchain.
After looking at the summary, we will dive deeper into the Detail section of the transaction.
- (1): The transaction hash or transaction id that represents the transaction.
- (2): The timestamp of the transaction when it is mined by miners.
- (3): The inputs of the transaction. The input of a transaction can consist of an Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO) or multiple UTXO with an exception for 2 types of transaction, the transaction that distributes the block reward (coinbase), Protx and Quorumtx where we will discuss in a separate article.
- (4): The outputs of the transaction. The addresses that receive the amount from the sender in the form of UTXO. Indicator (U) beside means that the transaction is unspent at the time of viewing while (S) means the output is spent.
- (5): The fee that the sender has set for the miners to consider adding the transaction into the block where the miner can claim the fee as part of the reward.
- (6): The number of confirmations of the transaction, presented as unconfirmed if the transaction is yet to be added to a block and the number of confirmation refers to how many blocks are added on top of the block where the transaction is included.
- (7): The sum of TRVC from the output of the transaction.
Address
The address is base58 encoded from the public key. The base58 encoding is commonly used for address representation as it eliminates the possibility that a character is misinterpreted by removing similar characters like the number 0 and the letter O. In Trivechain, all addresses start with a capital letter “T” which is same as “Trivechain” to increase the recognition of the community or “8” for multi signatory address.
The data in Summary are: -
- Total Receive: The total amount of TRVC that has been received by this address.
- Total Sent: The total amount of TRVC that has been sent from this address.
- Final Balance: The final balance of the address or Total Received deducted by Total Sent.
- No. Transactions: Number of transactions that the address contains.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Insight is a tool that allows the public to verify and inspect information regarding the network of Trivechain. Efforts are being put to ensure that public and layman are able to verify transactions of a blockchain.
Insight: https://insight.trivechain.com/
Explorer: https://explorer.trivechain.com/
Trivechain’s wallet (TRVC App): https://trvc.app/register?referral_code=PAVNAI
Github: https://github.com/trivechain/trivechain-core
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/trivechain/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/trivechain_trvc
Telegram: https://t.me/trivechain
Wechat: Wechat ID TRVC20
Discord: https://discordapp.com/invite/2stZ3he
Medium: https://medium.com/trivechain
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/user/TRVC-2
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIUtsQZ8KCWWD9M3CpEAR-w
