What is the Blockchain Block Explorer and why it is so important
By: Lukas Wiesflecker
Tags: Technology, Finance, Ethereum, Bitcoin, Investing

The term Explorer is familiar to many people from their home computer. The Blockchain Block Explorer or Blockchain Explorer is the crypto counterpart to it. However, many are not even aware of such an explorer's special functions because it can do much more than just document transactions.

Blockchain Block Explorer briefly explained

A blockchain explorer often called a block explorer, is a website or program that allows users to browse the blocks in a blockchain. Therefore, it is comparable to the folders and files listed in the computer’s Explorer. Almost all common cryptocurrencies have their own Block Explorer. The user can only use the Block Explorer that is also intended for the platform. This means that a Bitcoin Explorer could not display Ethereum transactions, for example. Accordingly, an Ethereum Explorer must be used. The first Bitcoin Explorer was launched in November 2010.

What can the Block Explorer do?

The number of transactions and nodes on a blockchain (What is a blockchain?) is becoming more complex and difficult to understand. A Block Explorer can help to bring light into the darkness. Many users track their recent transactions on such an explorer to see if the payment has arrived. But the Block Explorer has many more functions:

Block Feed: Through the Block Explorer, users can follow live when a new block is added to the blockchain. The Explorer lists these and usually gives a time and much other information such as block height, block hash, contained transactions, block output in tokens, transaction fees, and the miner or mining pool's name.

Transaction Feed: Users can explore and track the transactions of each block using Explorer.

History of a specific address: Users can also track the transaction history of a specific wallet address. Provided one knows the public address. This makes it easy to check all previous transactions and the current account balance.

Evaluation in numbers: Many explorers evaluate the transactions and blocks and indicate them. For example, the largest transaction of the day can be displayed, or how many blocks in total or attached to a day, and much more.

Double issues and orphaned blocks: Some of the more advanced explorers can display how many double spends were made in the last 10 minutes and show how many orphaned blocks currently exist.

Mempool: The so-called Mempool is used to collect transactions that have not yet been confirmed and grouped into blocks. These can also be displayed in the Explorer. For this purpose, additional information such as transaction rates, fees, data size, and global distribution is usually displayed for some providers.

Genesis Block: The Genesis block is the first block of a blockchain. This block can also be displayed with the Block Explorer. Information such as date, time, and miner

Who uses a Block Explorer and why?

In general, everybody can and should use such an Explorer. Beginners and advanced users can get a lot of interesting information about the respective blockchain. Users can track their transactions. The explorers are also important for miners because they show them the last block that was mined and the transactions contained in it, fees paid, and much more. This information can be used to calculate the possible profit margin, and many other conclusions can be drawn.

The explorer is important because it enables a core feature of open-source blockchain technology: transparency! The recording of blocks and the transactions they contain in the Explorer creates clear and unchangeable documentation accessible to everyone.

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