Today we’re excited to announce the initial release of the official Esprezzo Block Explorer! If you’re unfamiliar with the function, use case or “raison d’être” of a block explorer, it’s essentially a web application that makes it easy to view, search, and “explore” data and activity on one or more blockchains.
Block explorers are useful for checking the status of transactions, as well as just poking around a blockchain to learn more about how it is structured and what data it contains, but more importantly, a block explorer is an essential tool for blockchain-related software development. Whether creating a new decentralized application (DApp) or integrating blockchain data into an existing product, a well-designed block explorer can increase developer happiness and productivity by allowing them to more conveniently monitor the real-time metrics, activity, and status of blocks, transactions and other on-chain data.
The initial release of Esprezzo’s Block Explorer provides an easy way for developers and miners to view balances and activity on Esprezzo’s Perkle blockchain in real-time, and focuses on the desktop browsing experience.
In the process of creating the block explorer and our previously released PerkleBot for Discord, we iterated on our API libraries, which are the underpinnings of our entire upcoming SaaS product suite. The explorer UI was built using Vue.js and the underlying API and libraries are built using Elixir. We intend to add SDKs in as many languages as possible and encourage the open source community to develop their own libraries in languages they like to use.
In case you’re new to block explorers, you can use them to:
- Browse network stats
- Check the history of a specific address or browse all addresses
- Query specific transactions and blocks
- See if a transaction has processed
- View all transactions in a specific block
For browsing, start at the block explorer homepage to view network stats and click on recent transactions or blocks for more details. It’s also easy to search based on the information you need:
- Block ID (block number or hash):
- Block creation time & PRKL created
- Transactions included in the block
- Transaction ID (hash):
- Transaction status, timestamp and fees
- Address hash:
- Balance of the address
- Send and receive information
- Transaction history
Blocks
Clicking on Blocks shows you a list of blocks from newest to oldest. View details for a specific block by clicking the block number.
Block Details
The Single Block or Block Details view displays more granular information unique to a specific block such as creation time, who mined the block, transactions included in the block and more.
Transactions
Clicking on Transactions shows you a list of transactions from newest to oldest based on the timestamp of the blocks they are included in. View details for a specific transaction by clicking the transaction hash link.
Transaction Details
The Transactions Detail view is where you’ll see granular data for a specific transaction on the blockchain.
Addresses
Clicking on Addresses shows you a list of all Perkle addresses.
Address Detail
Clicking on Addresses shows you a list of all active Perkle addresses. (Sidenote: you can easily create a Perkle wallet using MyEtherWallet or PerkleBot on Discord. And don’t be afraid run a full node! 🙂)
What’s Next
Upcoming releases will include enhanced browsing of our in-house smart contract library as well as an interface to all smart contracts deployed on the platform. As our ecosystem is currently fully compatible with the Ethereum protocol, we will also be connecting the explorer to Ethereum Mainnet and our partner Ethereum-compatible blockchains.
Our forthcoming API and SDKs are focused on providing developers unmatched ease of use and power while connecting Perkle and other Esprezzo-supported blockchains to their applications.
If you're interested in getting blockchain stats delivered to you instead of having to repeatedly check block explorers and wallets, check out Esprezzo Dispatch — a tool we're working on that makes it super easy and fast to create blockchain-based notifications and automations.
Please check it out and let us know what you think! If you encounter issues or have suggestions, please join our Discord #support channel.
