Blockscout News: January 2025
This month we celebrate 7 years as an open-source explorer 🎉🎉🎉 The first commits to the Blockscout repo were in January 2016, and since then we've grown exponentially thanks to the 100s of open-source contributors and 1000's of chains using Blockscout today.
Blockscout's story began 7 years ago when we were searching for a suitable blockchain explorer for a new L1 network. Back then, these networks were called sidechains (if they didn't inherit state from the original protocol) or forks (if they did, which is quite rare nowadays). There were no notions of L1, L2, L3, or even EVM-compatible concepts yet.
Among Ethereum maximalists, there was a consensus that alternative networks were harmful to Ethereum's success, and launching their tokens and networks was viewed at best like memecoins are today - something one could speculate on during a day trade, but not something worth investing long term in, e.g. to stake or hodl. From the projects' side, there was a parasitic perception of the main Ethereum network (slow, expensive, which was a result of proof-of-work, non-scalable horizontally).
Mainnet tooling was perceived by sidechains as something inaccessible - Etherscan, Metamask, Infura - only for mainnet or official testnets. Many sidechains or fork projects never moved beyond a whitepaper or using existing solutions (Etherchain was a common option for explorers).
It is good for the industry that there were exceptions, including our project. We also initially went the Etherchain route, but everything changed (in a "butterfly effect") when one community member, Andrew Cravenho, created a new explorer, POA Explorer, on his own initiative and open-sourced it (sic! It was written in PHP, a very uncommon stack in crypto development). Immediately we saw how people interacted with that new explorer and that it was just as important as innovations in consensus or network security models. It was a fresh experience compared to the many Etherchain forks which gave us an inspiration for the new product.
We invited Andrew for a coffee to San Francisco and offered him to lead the future Blockscout team, soon to be a critical component for Ethereum scaling success, shaping the way we interact with EVM based chains.
-Igor Barinov
Founder, Blockscout
We are grateful to everyone who has supported the Blockscout journey so far....and there is still lots to do! This month we focused on improving the core product and introduced some features designed for functionality and fun.
- 💪 Product releases included backend v6.10.0 and frontend v1.37.0, Chainscout explorer list, new smart contract interaction features, and a Capybara game.
- 🪐 Blockscout is now available for Cosmos-based chains thanks to the great work from FairMath and their Shuttle proxy server.
- 🔆 DeFi chain spotlights on Ink, Unichain, and Soneium.
- 🌟 The Blockscout Merits Program expanded to include partner campaigns with xStar (expired) and Mellow Protocol (ongoing).
- 🌱 Public Goods funding kicked off with Octant Epoch 6 and continues in February with the Giveth Loving on Public Goods round.
The January newsletter is brought to you by Ink, the L2 unleashed by Kraken. Join the House of Ink - a 5-day hacker house during ETH Denver for hands-on smart contract development and workshops.
💪 Product Features
- Backend (v6.10.0) and frontend (v1.37.0) releases brought plenty of new functionality to Blockscout in January. Some highlights include a multichain search database, Stylus contract verification, image optimization, DEX pools page, and tons of sorting and ordering features.
Andrew G
- The Fairmath team released SHUTTLE, a proxy server that enables Blockscout block explorer for Cosmos-based chains. Shuttle works as a proxy on websocket and HTTP requests. Incoming JSON RPC requests are translated to corresponding Cosmos HTTP requests, and the result is transmitted in the Ethereum format. This project is still under development, and developers are encouraged to run the server and provide feedback.
fairmath
- Chainscout provides a listing of known Blockscout explorer deployments along with filters to quickly discover chains within different ecosystems. Projects can add their explorer URLs and project information directly to the repo and be listed on the site.
- Chainscout: https://chains.blockscout.com
- Repo: https://github.com/blockscout/chainscout
Revealer
- New Smart Contract Interaction and Transaction Interpretation features make Blockscout more intuitive and developer-friendly.
📝 Smart Contract interaction just got smoother!
— Blockscout 🔭 (@blockscoutcom) January 15, 2025
Block explorers let you read contract data and write new transactions directly through the UI - We've redesigned this experience to make it more intuitive for both developers and users
💡 Find any verified contract and click on… pic.twitter.com/uP6UIH7oQv
🧠 Making blockchain data human-friendly!
— Blockscout 🔭 (@blockscoutcom) January 24, 2025
Our new smart interpreter combines LLM technology with custom templates to turn complex transactions into clear, readable summaries.
No more staring at the data wondering what happened... pic.twitter.com/92U8npmvpF
- The Capybara runner game launched as a fun addition to the Ethereum block explorer when landing on a non-existent block page. Players can solve the riddle and earn Merits for scoring 1000+ points.
🔢 Count all blocks up high
🔎 One and twelve zeros to spy
🎯 That's a block to try
🦫 Where Capy jumps to fly
🎮 Give it space to glide
⭐️ Get 1000 points to qualify
eth.blockscout.com/block/countdown
🔆 DeFi Chain Spotlights
🐙 Ink
Ink is a new DeFi-focused L2 built on the Optimism Superchain. Created by the team behind Kraken, Ink has achieved Stage 1 decentralization with permissionless fault proofs. Ink Accounts and transaction numbers have been growing rapidly in recent days. The Dappscout marketplace just launched on the Ink explorer for interactivity and discovery of DApps deployed on Ink.
- Ink Blockscout Explorer: https://explorer.inkonchain.com
- Get started on Ink with this Ink Starter Pack Post from community member Capie.
🦄 Unichain
Unichain mainnet is not yet live, but the testnet is very active with developers testing and preparing for the mainnet launch. A robust infrastructure featuring explorers, wallets, faucets, bridges, and other tools are available now on the Unichain testnet.
Over the previous month daily transactions have averaged more than 680K with a high of 950K+ transactions on January 5. 1 second block times and miniscule transaction fees make Unichain an extremely attractive option for future DeFi operations.
- Unichain testnet explorer: https://unichain-sepolia.blockscout.com
Uniswap Foundation
🛞 Soneium
Soneium mainnet is empowering creators across the blockchain spectrum. Sony Block Solutions Labs has officially launched the Soneium mainnet, marking a significant milestone in bringing web3 technology to creators, fans and community.
- Soneium Mainnet explorer: https://soneium.blockscout.com
- Soneium Minato testnet explorer: https://soneium-minato.blockscout.com
Learn more about the launch, Soneium's growing ecosystem, and specific block explorer features in our post 👇🏻
Joe C.
🌟 Merits Updates
- We've started running partner campaigns to bring Merits to a wider audience. So far we've seen a lot of interest and new Blockscout users thanks to our valued partners!
- The xStar campaign was a big success with more than 6,800 humans participating. Participants were able to mint an exclusive NFT badge by verifying their humanity through XStar, welcoming more humans to the Blockscout explorer experience.
- We just launched a new campaign with Mellow Protocol where participants can earn Mellow Merit Points, a supercharged point system that results in real Merits accumulation on Blockscout. Mellow Merit Points are converted to Merits and distributed to Blockscout users on a weekly basis.
- Blockscout is now on Guild, and we invite you to join our guild to receive special roles and other membership perks. Join today at https://guild.xyz/blockscout
- This month we released a Telegram mini app that connects to the Merits ecosystem. Simply launch the app and login to check your Merits and receive the latest Merits alpha directly in Telegram.
👉 Launch here: https://t.me/blockscout_merits_bot
⚡️ New channel for Merits alpha!
— Blockscout 🔭 (@blockscoutcom) January 17, 2025
Get on our Telegram mini app to track your Merits history, monitor progress, and be the first to know about new ways to earn 😎
📲 Launch TG mini app & log in: https://t.co/m1DloqAiRd
🎁 Early bird reward:
Log in before Feb 1, 00:00 UTC, to… pic.twitter.com/jqMJ5MND1z
- Merits collectors are posting their streaks on X, with some users claiming Merits every day since launch (that's 83 days, but who's counting😉). The longer your streak continues, the more Merits you can earn! Learn more about streaks here.
We encourage you to claim on a daily basis and use Swapscout to earn additional Merits. We are working on more ways to reward Merits within Blockscout, and will continue with promotions like the Memepool challenge to help you boost your Merits.
🌱 Public Goods Funding
- We participated in Octant's Epoch 6 funding round in January. 64 GLM holders donated to Blockscout resulting in a 1.73 ETH match from Octant. It was great to be included along with many stellar projects and we thank everyone who supported us in the round!
- This month we are excited to be a part of Giveth's Loving on Public Goods round, running until February 14 😍. It is very easy to give on Giveth, you can choose to donate from a large variety of chains with many different tokens. This is a QF round with 100K matching support, meaning even a $1 USDC donation can go a long way.
If you'd like to support Blockscout's efforts, this is an easy way to do it. Donations help us tremendously and ensure that open-source stays that way and open-source developers get paid. Thank you for considering a donation!
🔮 Coming Next Month...
- We are working on a Blockscout 7.0.0 backend release focused on code optimization and clearing out technical debt. An accompanying frontend release is planned for the end of February which will introduce some new features to the explorer. Stay tuned for details!
- We've got team members heading to EthDenver 🦬 Find us in our Blockscout shirts and request a pair of special socks (aka Sockscout). These are very limited edition and designed to keep your feet extra toasty in the Denver snow.
The Blockscout monthly newsletter goes out to all MyAccount community users on supported chains. We welcome your feedback on topics you'd like to see covered or any questions you have. Visit us on X or Discord to get your explorer questions answered or get your project added to our growing network list.
