Best Blockchain Explorers

It’s only very few individuals that knows anything about blockchain explorers.

Once you’re dealing in cryptocurrency transactions, you will definitely need an explorer.

Blockchain is basically a public ledger, and explorers enable cryptopreneurs to search a much great information through the database.

Doing crypto business without a good blockchain explorer is just like someone using the internet without search engines.

Before going further the best explorers to use, let me quickly explain what blockchain explorer is all about in general.

What is Blockchain explorer?

A blockchain explorer is more like a search engine that allows you to navigate through the entire database to trace or track cryptocurrency transactions.

A Bitcoin block explorer can help you check the balance of different public addresses, track transfer histories and how many confirmations that passed.

It can also get a wide variety of statistics about the network such as the current hash rate and more.

Block Explorer displays the contents of individual BTC blocks, transaction histories and balances of many public wallet addresses.

Usually the block explorer software will supply some of the following:

1. List of a chain’s recent blocks
2. Transactions in a given block
3. Links to previous and next transaction (both input and output)
4. List of all transactions involving a given address
5. Current and historical address balances
6. Search for blocks, transactions, and addresses etc.

When it comes to best blockchain explorer, there are several factors you should consider to make the right choice, such as;

1. The cryptocurrency
2. Crypto wallet provider.

As humans, we’re constantly looking for the best alternatives to anything and everything we use.

There are wide choice of blockchain explorers to choose from, and the following are top blockchain explorers in the market currently.

Best Bitcoin blockchain explorers

In this list, I’ve put together the best blockchain explorers to make your search a lot easier, and they are the ones I personally use.

1. Blockchain.Com block explorer (Popular)

Blockchain.com block explorer is specifically made for Bitcoin alone, and this project has become a household name.

The reason behind its popularity isn’t due to quality of service, but because of being among the first services of its kind that people started using.

Blockchain’s block explorer is a traditional cryptocurrency wallet service, and it makes exploring the blockchain an easy task. 

Once you introduce your transaction ID, the system will provide the following information: block details, size, status and more useful details.

Blockchain.com Block Explorer also offers some additional tools such as an average fee graph, hash rate and mining difficult.

This service is suitable for both crypto newbies and experts alike.

Supported cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum only.

2. Blockchair

Blockchair is increasingly becoming a popular choice among cryptocurrency investors these days.

This service offers more data than Blockchain.com, making it perfect for those interested in further details on their cryptocurrency transactions.

Aside information related to a specific transaction, it also collects data on the blockchains, including circulation, transactions per block, the on-chain volume, etc.

Blockchair lets you search for transactions, addresses, blocks, and even embedded text data.

Supported cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Cardano, Bitcoin SV, Stellar, Monero, Dash, Dogecoin, Groestlcoin and Telegram Open Network.

3. Bitcoin.Com Bitcoin block explorer

The Bitcoin.com block explorer is a simple yet powerful blockchain explorer offering clean interface to look up for transactions on the BTC and BCH networks only.

A useful feature of this site is the possibility to scan QR codes of Bitcoin addresses, saving you the trouble of having to input wallet addresses manually.

Supported cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash.

4. BlockCypher

BlockCypher is an open-source explorer that can help you discover a wealth of information on a specific crypto asset.

Apart from standard blockchain explorer information, you’ll also get access to additional tools such as estimates on block confirmation time.

Supported cryptocurrencies: Litecoin, Dash, Dogecoin and Grin.

5. CoinMarketCap block explorer

CoinMarketCap blockchain explorer is one of the newest options, and it’s a reference for all crypto holders, when it comes to finding vital information.

Apart from getting cryptocurrencies and exchanges ranking sorted by market capitalization, you can also count on this site to find your transactions.

One thing I like about CoinMarketCap is its clean aesthetic, which provides a seamless user experience.

However, the only downside of CoinMarketCap explorer is the limited blockchains supported, but it’s still a great resource for mainstream crypto investment holders.

Supported cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin.

6. BTC.Com block explorer

Despite being among the newest alternatives, BTC.com quickly established itself as a solid choice in the cryptocurrency community.

Exploring the Bitcoin blockchain with BTC.com is certainly easy, fast and highly reliable.

BTC.com is one of the world’s biggest mining pools, and regularly shows up among block reward winning charts.

This platform offers insights such as; block transaction history, block size, energy consumption, ID of blocks among other details.

Supported cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum.

Best Ethereum blockchain explorers

If you also invest in Ethereum projects, below are the most reliable and popularly used Ethereum blockchain explorers in the market today.

1. Etherscan (Popular)

As the name suggests, Etherscan is the leading blockchain explorer exclusively and uniquely built for Ethereum database network only.

This is meant to provide Ethereum users to lookup, confirm and validate transactions taking place in the popular Ethereum blockchain more easily.

As Initial Coin Offerings (ICO) becomes popular, Etherscan can verify if the Ether from their wallet to the BAT address went through successfully.

To build decentralized applications (dApps), the platform provides API services, which can be also used to serve as data feeds for ETH Blockchain information.

Supported cryptocurrencies: All Ethereum ERC20 based tokens and cryptocurrencies.

2. Etherchain

Etherchain looks similar to Etherscan, and that’s not surprising for any blockchain explorer, but these similarities are more than surface level.

The main page lists the most recently mined blocks and transactions.

Ethereum statistics include the price, difficulty, block time, hash rate, transactions per second (TPS), and the uncle rate.

Etherchain doesn’t have its search box in a prominent central position like Etherscan, it’s found on the top right of the page.

This explorer introduces a splash of colour into the information presented.

Even the blocks and transactions get assigned colourful avatars, and the total Ether transferred is in green.

Etherchain provides other information besides Ethereum blockchain data, and also provide data on active hard forks.

They show the real-time profitability from mining pools, statistics on topics such as Ethereum’s economy, mining and network usage.

Supported cryptocurrencies: Some of the major Ethereum based tokens.

Best Ripple (XRP) explorer (Bonus)

Ripple (XRP) Block Explorer is a simple tool which gets you detailed information about any Ripple transaction, address, and block.

Below are the list of best Ripple block explorer compiled for you to track most of your transactions on the blockchain without having much stress;

• XRP Charts
• Bithomp XRP explorer
• XRP ledger explorer
• XRPL explorer ledger

Monero block explorer (Bonus)

Monero blockchain viewer is a tool that gives you detailed information about XMR transaction ID (i.e. TxID), address, and block log.

See the list of best XMR blockchain explorer compiled for you to track most of your TxID transactions without any stress;

• LocalMonero block explorer
• MoneroVision blockchain explorer
• XMRChain
• Monero Blocks

Final thoughts

As an investor, you should know about these block explorers, because they keep the community transparent and decentralized.

Aside from the intrigue factor, being able to use any of these tools for tracking transaction history is a wonderful feature of the crypto model.

One of my favourite things to do is seeing the genesis block that Satoshi Nakamoto mined in 2009.

Meanwhile, do not be carried away by sophisticated nature of different blockchain networks, as security is of paramount importance.

Always try your best to maintain your crypto investment safety use a good cryptocurrency wallet in the market.

If you can afford investing in security, I would recommend a hardware wallet, as they’re among the most secure offline wallets.