As the name suggests, the blockchain browser is a web page to view blockchain information. It’s like a window of bitcoin, through which people can see what is going on inside the bitcoin network. For example, if people want to know when a transfer will arrive, how much is the handling fee and how wealthy is the address which has transferred currency to you, they can make use of the blockchain browser as the window to obtain all the aforesaid information.

Learning to use the blockchain browser is a necessary skill for those dealing with cryptocurrency. Here, we will take the btc.com blockchain browser as an example to teach you how to use the blockchain browser.

 

Some Basic Data

Open btc.com and you can check the height, size, reward and other data of the latest blocks on the homepage.

As we all know, bitcoin is based on the application of blockchain technology. It’s called blockchain because a new block is connected to the old one and the block height indicates the sequence of new block in the blockchain. For instance, the height of the latest block in the figure is 576159, which means it’s the 576159th block in the bitcoin blockchain.

Then, what does the broadcaster(“Relayed By”) mean? Since the mining pool is adopted for mining activity nowadays, what has successfully mined is usually the pool. Therefore, the broadcaster refers to the successful mining of the pool. The block size refers to the amount of data in bitcoin transaction during the time when two blocks are mined.

In addition to 12.5 BTCs, the block reward of bitcoin also includes the transaction fee within a certain period, so the block reward is often higher than 12.5 BTCs. In the figure, we can see that the block reward is usually higher than 12.5 BTCs. In general, larger block size will result in higher block reward, because larger block size means higher transaction volume within this period and higher handling fee paid by the users.

In the “network status” on the homepage, we can see all the data of current bitcoin network. The useful data should be the number and volume of unconfirmed transactions. The BTC network has always been congested, so we can find that nearly 60k transactions have not been confirmed by the mining workers.

Another useful data is current best transaction fee, which is related to our transfer costs. The transfer fee for BTC is 0.00116BTC/KvB.

 

How to check if the transfer is successful

Sometimes when we charge cryptocurrency to the exchange, or withdraw from the exchange to the wallet, we may encounter the problem of transfer delay. Then, we may feel very anxious because we don’t know where our currency has gone. After all, most people are not familiar with the cryptocurrency technology. So, this article will explain how to use the blockchain browser to check whether our cryptocurrency has been successfully transferred.

For example, when withdrawing cryptocurrency from the exchange, we can follow the steps below to check whether the transfer has been successfully done:

First, enter bitcoin receiving address in the search box and click Search.

The 1E7…MwV in the figure is just our testing address. It can be seen that my address has received 0.0475 BTC with 1 transactions in total and the current balance is 0.0475 BTC.

Let’s have a look at the latest receiving record under this address. The left side represents the address of the sender while the right side represents the address of the receiver. There are many receivers for this transaction, including mine (1E7…MwV).

Click on the long characters (b9e4e070a…ce2f28d) in the figure, which represents the transaction SN. Click to check the details of the transaction.

It can be seen that the transaction is issued from three address (32RQQ…77njA, 3Ea4KW…16ZYY, 3As4V…Vw2tU) with 32 receiving addresses. A total of 1.80719221 BTCs have been issued and the handling fee is 0.00227982 BTC. The final recipient receives 1.80491239 BTCs. The transaction has been confirmed by 39 blocks, which means those blocks have concluded the transaction record.

Usually when we transfer currency to the exchange or withdraw from the exchange, it may be delayed for long because it has not been confirmed by enough blocks. Let’s have a look at the latest transaction. Click on the block of the latest height to check all transaction data contained in this block.

Check any transaction in the latest blocks, for example, the one numbered (b1c76…270e8), click on the transaction number in the same way.

It can be seen that only 2 confirmations for this transaction. While, our transaction above has been confirmed by 39 blocks since it was done long time ago. Some exchanges demand 6 confirmations to show the successful transfer and some even require more. That’s why the currency transfer may have been delayed for several hours!

 

Postscript

Some common blockchain browsers are listed as follows:

• BTC blockchain browser: https://btc.com/
• BCH blockchain browser: https://bch.btc.com//?_ga=2.109739212.851195193.1512460186-675050083.1511509233
• Litecoin blockchain browser: https://live.blockcypher.com/ltc/
• Ethereum blockchain browser: https://etherscan.io/
• ETC blockchain browser: http://gastracker.io/
• Dash blockchain browser: https://explorer.dash.org/chain/Dash

 

That’s all about the introduction of blockchain browsers. To know more about the blockchain and bitcoin, please leave message for us and we will choose the proper topics to popularize the blockchain knowledge.