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What is a block explorer?
A block explorer is a website that lets anyone look up the public data on a blockchain: blocks, addresses and individual transactions. For a transaction it shows the hash, whether it is pending, failed or succeeded, the sender, the recipient and the fee paid.
What it means for you
You can check a payment yourself instead of relying on someone's word: paste the transaction hash and see whether it succeeded and where the funds went. A screenshot can be faked; the explorer page for the hash on the right chain is the record.
How it works
An explorer reads a chain's public data and presents it as searchable pages. For a transaction it shows the hash, the status (pending, failed or success), the block it was included in and its timestamp, the from and to addresses, tokens transferred, value and the fee paid to the validator. The advanced view adds the gas limit, gas actually used, gas price, the sender's nonce and any input data sent to a contract. For an address it shows the balance and history; for a block, its height, timestamp, transaction count and gas.
Source: ethereum.org: Block explorers · checked 4 October 2026
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