Educational Post: What Is Etherscan and How to Use It? Ethe | APEX WHALE LIBRARY

Educational Post:

What Is Etherscan and How to Use It?

Etherscan is a blockchain explorer for the Ethereum network. The website allows you to search through transactions, blocks, wallet addresses, smart contracts, and other on-chain data. It's one of the most popular Ethereum blockchain explorers and is free to use.

Using Etherscan can help you understand exactly how you interact with the blockchain, other wallets, and DApps. This knowledge can also help you stay safe and spot suspicious behavior.

To use Etherscan, you'll need a wallet address, transaction ID (TXID), contract address, or another identifier to paste into the search field. The information you'll see will depend on what you're looking at, but most of it will include associated transactions, addresses, timestamps, and amounts.

You can also interact directly with smart contracts to make transactions, check gas fees, and search for airdrops through Etherscan.

Why should I use Etherscan?

Etherscan is one of the most trusted and popular block explorers for Ethereum. However, it’s more important to understand why you should use a block explorer like Etherscan to check on-chain information. Having more knowledge of how you interact with the blockchain can help you better understand what's going on with DApps and transactions. This knowledge can also keep you safe and help you spot suspicious blockchain activity.

For example, whale alerts let you know if large amounts of a cryptocurrency have been moved onto an exchange. While not always the case, this information might suggest a large sell-off. You can also see what the founders of a project are doing with their project's tokens. This can help you spot potential scams or rug pulls, where developers abandon their projects and sell their coins.