Customize your Chain Exploration with Blockscout Tags

Blockscout tags make it super easy to identify and categorize many types of data! You can now tag blockchain addresses, contracts, and transactions, making it a breeze to label popular smart contracts and verified projects with familiar names and useful information.

The tagging feature also simplifies filtering, searching, and analyzing blockchain addresses. It allows you to track transactions effortlessly and quickly identify contracts with similar labels.

Public vs Private Tags

There are two types of tags on Blockscout: Public and private tags.

Public tags are visible to everyone on the Explorer. Many tags are imported automatically by Blockscout as metadata. However, individuals can also submit public tags. Blockscout manages these through an admin interface, and they are added by submitting a request. A Blockscout moderator reviews each request before it is accepted or denied.

Private tags are only visible to you. To create private tags, you can create a BlockScout account or sign in if you already have one. The tags and any corresponding information will be saved to your personal account.

Private tags

Paste a transaction or contract address into the Explorer to create private tags. For this example, I will use the Safe Contract address “0x5aFE3855358E112B5647B952709E6165e1c1eEEe.”

Click on the three-icon button and select "Add private tag." If you haven't logged in, you will be prompted to do so.

Add the name of the tag and save the changes.

Your private tag will then pop up in the contract alongside other tags if there are any.

Click on the private tags icon on the sidebar to view and organize private tags within your account.

You can sort your tags by address or transactions and edit any previously created tags.

Public tags

Public tags are publicly visible on the Blockscout Explorer and can be used to group and classify contract addresses and transactions and perform other actions. Let's review some examples of public tags and their use cases.

Public tags examples

1. Public tags can label a token or contract with keywords that can group them with similar tokens or contracts. 

2. Public tags allow you to find a list of addresses based on a specific tag. For example, click on one of the tags for the stablecoin, and a list of addresses with similar tags will appear.

3. Public tags can be used to perform actions for certain Dapps. Blockscout pushes the use of tags even further; action buttons let users can click on a tag that takes them to a dapp to perform an action.

4. Public tags can also include additional information, and we refer to them as enhanced tags. They can be customized with a different color, a description tooltip, and an icon. 

How To Submit a Public Tag

Step 1: There are 2 ways to submit a public tag: Click the three-dot icon from a particular address page or from the settings icon on the sidebar. 

Step 2: The submit form will appear. Some fields are automatically filled with preset information, such as the submitter's name/email and the contract address. You will then fill in the remaining fields.

• Company name and website—The company's name and website associated with the contract or address.
• Smart contract/Addresses—The address of the smart contract or transaction. You can add multiple contracts by clicking the add icon on the left.
• Tag—The name you want to assign to the tag. You can also add more than one tag by clicking the add icon [+] 
• Tag Type — The type of tag you want to create. There are seven different types of tags, each with a unique purpose;

• Name — Serves as an alias for the address.
• Generic — Categorizes the address into groups to search similar tagged addresses easily.
• Information — Tags with custom data for the address, such as additional links to the project, classification details, or minor account information.
• Classifier—Classifies the address into groups, including "ERC20," "Contract," "CEX," "DEX," and "NFT."
• Protocol — A specific tag type for protocol-related contracts, such as bridges and aggregators.
• Note — A brief general-purpose description of the address.
• Internal — Tags are intended for internal use.

• Label URL — The link for the tag (optional)
• Background & Text Color: The suggested color of your tag's background and text in Hex code (optional)
• Label Description — Describe the label in fewer than 80 characters (optional).

Step 3: After you’ve completed the fields, click Send request.

Step 4: A moderator will review your request and either approve or deny it.

Step 5: Moderator view where a tag is accepted or denied.

Step 6: The tag appears on the contract page once the request is approved.

How to Create Advanced Tags

1. Submit a Public Tag and populate the form with information related to your Advanced tag (I will use the GHO contract for this example).

2. Request a custom image for your tag by contacting the Blockscout team on Discord (let the team know that you are creating a tag and want to include an image, you can provide the image to the team).
3. After approval, The tag will be visible on your contract's page. The custom icon linked to the tag can be seen below.

The benefits of tags

As you can see, including tags helps everyone understand more information and context about contracts, tokens, and addresses. It is a great way to bring additional utility and information to the explorer and can even improve the UI aesthetics by bringing in additional colors and images.

Tagging can also serve an important safety and security function. Blockscout has been able to quickly label scam contracts and attacker's addresses during adverse events (for example the Bybit exploit) making it easier to track and avoid contracts and addresses involved in ongoing scams and hacks.

We encourage you to submit private and public tags to help make Blockscout even more useful!