What is Etherscan and how to use it?

Key takeaways

Etherscan provides a user-friendly interface for viewing activity on the blockchain, such as viewing transactions, interacting with smart contracts, tracking gas fees, and reviewing token approvals.

You can read and edit smart contracts using Etherscan’s “Read” and “Write” contract features, which also gives you the option to delete NFTs from smart contracts when applicable.

When minting NFTs from smart contracts, double check the address and amounts and ensure you are using the correct functions, as smart contracts are irreversible once executed.

Blockchains are open databases that are transparent, where anything that happens in the chain is published. That said, it is difficult to ask directly to the blockchain. This is where blockchain explorers like Etherscan and BscScan extract the complexity and provide a simple interface to look at activity on the blockchain.

What is Etherscan?

Etherscan is a blockchain explorer – a software to visualize data within the blockchain network. It is an essential tool for blockchain research focused on the Ethereum chain. It’s also a way for people to track transactions recorded on the chain, which is handy if their transferred funds haven’t appeared in their wallets.

Anyone can use Etherscan to search, confirm and validate Ethereum transactions. This includes:

Search for and view deals and wallets

Interaction with smart contracts

Track gas fees

Reviewing and revoking your sign approvals.

Although you can find your Ethereum wallet and track your transactions on Etherscan, it is not a wallet. To use ETH or enter a transaction, you will need to use your crypto exchange or wallet.

If you want to set up a crypto wallet, check out our Beginner’s Guide to MetaMask.

Search transactions on Etherscan

Etherscan comes with many valuable features to surface activity on the blockchain. Anyone can search for transactions and verify that transactions have taken place. There are two ways to go about it. One is to enter a transaction hash, which is an identifier for that particular transaction. The other is to enter a wallet address and search for the transaction.

The search box is where you enter either an address or the transaction hash.

How to read Etherscan transactions

On September 27, 2021, Rhino.fi (formerly Deversifi) spent 1.7K ETH ($23m) in fees on a $100k transaction. This was the result of accidentally adjusting the tilt feature on the EIP-1559 gas function. If someone wants to check what happened in the case of Rhino.fi, they will just need to enter its transaction hash on Etherscan. The transaction details can be viewed here on Etherscan.

Using this transaction as an example, there are several pieces of information that a transaction provides.

‘Transaction hash’ is the transaction identifier attached to this transaction.

‘Status’ shows whether the transaction is successful, pending or failed.

‘Timestamp’ is when the transaction was confirmed and mined.

‘From’ shows who sent the transaction.

‘Interaction with (To)’ shows who received the transaction.

‘Tokens Transferred’ shows us what has been transferred along with the value of the tokens.

‘Transaction Fee’ shows the cost for the transaction.

‘Gas Price’ shows how much gas fee has been paid and tells us about network conditions at that time.

Fortunately, the Rhino.fi fee error has since been resolved, and the miner has refunded the amount.

View a wallet on Etherscan

Wallet addresses contain information about token holdings and transactions. As an example, below is the wallet address that hosts Aave’s ecosystem reserve. We can see that it holds $136.9 million in assets across 18 different tokens at the time of writing. This made a total of 7 separate transactions clear under the ‘Transactions’ list. We can also see that this address last made a transaction more than 47 days ago.

The token section also categorizes tokens according to their respective standards. An NFT will fall into the ERC-721 category and appear under it.

Review and revoke your token approvals

Scams abound in the world of cryptocurrencies. When interacting with a DeFi protocol, you must approve smart contracts to spend your tokens. Usually, the default amount of characters to approve is set to infinity. This is beneficial as it saves time and money on gas fees. However, this presents an opportunity for malicious actors to take advantage of users by draining tokens from their wallets. To avoid this scary hack, Etherscan provides a useful tool to review and revoke tokens by giving users the option to adjust the amount of approved tokens.

To navigate to token approvals, go to ‘More’ on the menu bar, and under ‘Tools’, look for ‘Token Approvals’. This tool also shows the amount of risk a wallet is exposed to. In this case, this particular wallet has ~$7k worth of tokens at risk. Click ‘revoke’ to adjust the number of tokens set for approval or to cancel completely.

Etherscan Gas Tracker

Gas prices inform us about current network conditions. As demand for block space increases, gas prices rise due to users wanting transactions to confirm faster. Etherscan shows an estimated amount of gas prices that must be set for transactions to be confirmed. It also provides a good overview of which contracts use the most gas, along with what the gas price has been for the last 1000 blocks.

Interaction with smart contracts

Etherscan allows users to read and edit smart contracts using its “Read Contract” and “Write Contract” features. By reading smart contracts, we can discover what is beneath the surface of transactions.

Another use case is to strike NFTs out of smart contracts. Contracts that have a check mark indicate that they have been verified. If the contract is not authenticated, you may not be able to interact with it unless you have access to its application binary interface.

When minting NFTs from smart contracts, remember to confirm the address and amounts, and ensure you are using the correct functions, as smart contracts are irreversible once executed.

How to make NFT from smart contracts

To create NFTs from smart contracts, you need to refer to the “Write” part of the smart contract, which is visible on a block explorer like Etherscan.

Take ‘Realms (for Adventurers)’ NFT smart contract for example:

1. Copy the contract address (“0x7afe30cb3e53dba6801aa0ea647a0ecea7cbe18d”) to Etherscan’s search tab.

2. Go to the contract tab under “Write contract” and connect your wallet by clicking “Connect to Web3”.

3. Check if the contract is open to the public or just booty holders. If it is the former, pay the cost of the derivative and enter an available “lootId”.

4. If the fees are too high, it means that the NFT has been claimed. Try with a different ID.

If the gas fees are unusually high, check with current gas prices to know what you expect to pay to hit the NFT.

Closure

Above are some of the main features that Etherscan offers. There is much more, such as allowing users to set alerts for addresses, view token inventory and its holders, and for developers to build applications on its APIs. It also has a list where anyone can see the ERC-20 and ERC-721 token transfers taking place.

On the analytical side, they also provide statistics and charts about the markets, blockchains and networks. One last thing of note is that although Etherscan is a centralized platform, it only gives a visualization of the current state of the blockchain, such as transaction status, but has no control over any transactions. Without a doubt, Etherscan is an indispensable tool for anyone using the Ethereum network. Most importantly, all the features explained above are free to use!

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