Introduction
The Ethereum ecosystem is evolving rapidly as Ethereum becomes the Settlement Layer, while numerous Layer 2 and Layer 3 blockchains are emerging to improve scalability. The rapid development of frameworks and blockchain-building tools drives this growth. However, creating a “perfect” blockchain requires many components and substantial costs to ensure stable operations. A block explorer is one of the essential components, often accounting for a significant portion of operational expenses. Fortunately, open-source tools like Blockscout offer blockchain projects a high-quality explorer at minimal cost. This article explores how Blockscout helps blockchains save costs in building and maintaining an efficient block explorer.
What is a Block Explorer and How Much Does It Cost to Build?
What is a Block Explorer?
A block explorer is a tool used to retrieve data about blocks, transactions, addresses, and more on a blockchain. Block explorers enhance the transparency of blockchain networks, allowing anyone to access on-chain information they wish to explore. Nowadays, some block explorers, like Blockscout, not only serve as a tool for retrieving data but also come equipped with many additional useful features that improve usability and functionality.
Cost of Building a Block Explorer
Recently, there has been a surge of interesting discussions around the costs of launching a blockchain in general and a block explorer in particular. Opinions on this vary widely. For instance, Yano, co-founder of Blockworks, estimates that building a block explorer can cost anywhere from $250,000 to $1.5 million.
Meanwhile, legendary developer Andre Cronje has shared that his Layer 2 blockchain, Sonic, incurs an annual cost of around $800,000 for “Explorers, Custody, and Risk Management.”
Another prominent founder, Lucas Netz (who is set to launch Abstract Chain), also joined the discussion. He noted that launching a fully-featured blockchain — including explorers, custody, exchanges, oracles, bridges, toolkits, IDEs, on/off ramps, native issuance, and integration — would cost between $10 million and $15 million.
From the statements above, we can draw two key conclusions:
1. A block explorer is an essential component when building a blockchain.
2. The cost of building a blockchain is substantial, reaching millions of dollars, with similar costs required for ongoing maintenance each year.Build Efficient Explorers at a Very Low Cost
Build An Efficient Block Explorer with Blockscout
What is Blockscout?
Blockscout provides developers with an open-source toolkit specifically designed to build highly customizable blockchain explorers. Developers can freely choose from the wide range of features that Blockscout offers to create the most suitable explorer for their Layer 2 solutions. As of now, over 500 blockchains have adopted Blockscout to make their on-chain activities more accessible and efficient.
How Blockscout Explorer Optimizes Costs
It is clear that by allowing anyone to use its open-source solution, Blockscout helps blockchain projects save significant amounts of money. Below are some of the main areas where costs are reduced:
Development Costs
As you may know, developing a high-quality technology product is extremely time-consuming and requires significant human and financial resources. This becomes a major barrier for smaller teams with limited financial support. Instead of building explorers from scratch, developers can leverage Blockscout’s open-source tools to construct their own explorers quickly and efficiently.
Blockscout Open-Source Explorer | Blockscout
Blockchain explorer for inspecting, analyzing, and interacting with EVM chains and optimistic rollups and zkrollups.
Blockscout does not charge any licensing fees, all in the interest of benefiting the community.
Maintenance Costs
Maintaining and operating a Blockscout explorer is significantly easier for development teams. First and foremost, they can self-host their explorers on optional services like AWS or dedicated servers, rather than relying on third-party providers. This approach not only saves costs but also provides better control over the project’s stability and data security.
Moreover, as an open-source product supported by a large developer community, Blockscout ensures transparency in bug detection. Contributors can quickly propose solutions and upgrades, minimizing unnecessary disruptions without incurring additional costs.
Additionally, with a rich toolkit at their disposal, developers can easily upgrade their explorers as needed. If they had to build a block explorer from scratch and develop individual features, they could face numerous obstacles that increase expenses. Blockscout eliminates these challenges, allowing projects to focus on development while optimizing their resources.
API Costs
API costs are among the most significant expenses when building a block explorer. When users access and utilize the block explorer, APIs can be called millions of times each month. For example, with a fee of $0.01 per API call, if there are 3 million API calls in a month, the total cost would reach $30,000.
In contrast, Blockscout offers free APIs such as Rest API, RPC API, GraphQL, Eth RPC API, and more. These APIs come with a rate limit of up to 50 requests per second, allowing for approximately 126 million requests each month. If a blockchain reaches this volume, it could save over $1 million solely in API costs.
As a result, using Blockscout not only reduces expenses but also enhances operational efficiency for blockchain projects.
And many other costs can be saved as well!
Conclusion
As the operational costs of blockchain continue to rise, leveraging open-source tools like Blockscout not only helps to significantly reduce expenses but also provides enhanced flexibility and functionality for projects. Blockscout offers an efficient block explorer solution that is easy to customize and maintain without incurring exorbitant fees. By taking advantage of its open features and vibrant community contributions, blockchains can create a comprehensive and secure block exploration system while optimizing their development and operational resources. Thus, Blockscout emerges as an indispensable choice for blockchain projects looking to save costs while ensuring quality and sustainable growth.
