Etherscan

Etherscan is a blockchain explorer and data-access service for Ethereum. It indexes public blockchain records and presents searchable pages for blocks, transactions, addresses, tokens, non-fungible tokens, and smart contracts.^[1] The service also supplies APIs and developer utilities for retrieving and interpreting on-chain activity.^[3]

Matthew Tan founded and launched Etherscan in 2015, according to the company's history.^[2] Ethereum.org independently lists Etherscan among Ethereum block-explorer services and describes explorers generally as interfaces for examining real-time execution and consensus data.^[4]

What It Does

Etherscan lets a user search Ethereum by transaction hash, block number, account or contract address, token, domain name, and labels assigned to known entities.^[1] Its navigation exposes pending and completed transactions, internal contract transactions, cross-chain records, beacon-chain deposits and withdrawals, blobs, account-abstraction transactions, blocks, and verified contracts.^[1]

The underlying records are public Ethereum data rather than proprietary consumer transactions. Ethereum.org explains that block explorers expose fields such as block height, timestamps, fees, transaction status, sender and recipient addresses, token transfers, contract code, and validator information.^[4] Etherscan adds an interface, indexing, labels, and tools that make those records easier to query.

Data And Methodology

The homepage reports network statistics and continually changing recent blocks and transactions.^[1] These values are time-sensitive observations of Ethereum, not market estimates produced through surveys. Etherscan also publishes token and NFT views, gas information, charts, and address labels, some of which combine blockchain records with contextual metadata.^[1][3]

Smart-contract verification allows a developer to associate published source code with deployed bytecode. Etherscan's history dates that service to 2016.^[2] Verification improves human inspection but does not itself prove that a contract is secure or that its operator is trustworthy. Likewise, an Etherscan label is contextual metadata and should not be confused with a protocol-level identity field.

Products

The public explorer includes transaction and block pages, token trackers, contract verification and comparison, an input-data decoder, a unit converter, CSV export, a gas tracker, a token-approval checker, and an advanced filtering interface.^[1] Etherscan also links to Blockscan products and offers an Explorer as a Service product for other networks.^[1][2]

The Etherscan API supplies REST endpoints for balances, normal and internal transactions, token transfers, contract source code, event logs, gas, and network statistics.^[3] A separate metadata interface covers names, labels, and address reputation.^[3] Current documentation describes one API-key system spanning multiple Ethereum Virtual Machine networks, although supported-chain counts and plan limits can change.^[3]

Delivery And Pricing

Most explorer pages can be viewed without an account through the website.^[1] Programmatic access requires an API key; Etherscan's documentation points users to free account setup, plan-specific rate limits, and paid tiers.^[3] Some website functions, such as private notes and custom labels, are account features rather than additions to the public blockchain record.^[1] Exact pricing and request allowances are not stable encyclopedic facts and must be checked against the current API pages.

History

Etherscan's corporate timeline records its explorer launch in August 2015 and API launch the following month.^[2] It later added ERC-20 support, Ethereum Name Service lookup, NFT metadata, verified signatures, gas tracking, address labels, BeaconScan, Blockscan, and an explorer service.^[2] The company says it supported Ethereum's transition to proof of stake in 2022 and acquired the Solana explorer Solscan in 2024.^[2] These milestones are company-reported; the independent Ethereum.org documentation corroborates Etherscan's continuing role as one of several available explorer services rather than designating it as part of the Ethereum protocol.^[4]