Maybe you sent crypto. Maybe someone sent you some. Maybe you minted your first token. Either way, all you have to show for it is a long string of letters and numbers that means nothing to you. Let's figure out in this short article the meaning of this string and how to better understand it and blockchain transactions in general!
By the way, your reaction is normal. Blockchains are transparent by design. Every transaction, every wallet, every token transfer is recorded and visible to anyone, and each is made unique by a single identifier called an "address." The only problem, though, is that "visible" doesn't mean "readable." Not without the right tool.
That tool is a block explorer.
Think of it like this: a blockchain is a massive public record book. A block explorer is the search engine that lets you actually find things in it. You paste in an address or a transaction # (hash), and it translates raw blockchain data into something a human can understand. Balances. Transfers. Fees. Timestamps. Everything that happened, in order, with receipts.
The most popular one for Ethereum is Etherscan. If you're on Base (a layer-2 network built on Ethereum, which Stella Achenbach covered in her blockchain layers article), you'd use BaseScan. For Solana, there's Solscan. Different chains, different explorers, same idea.
A block explorer is not a wallet. It can't move your money. It can't reverse anything. It's read-only. All it does is show you what actually happened on the blockchain. Something that has never existed in Web2 and therefore feels like a small learning curve to most of us.
Let's walk through the main 'ingredients' you'll see when you open a block explorer together, so it feels less intimidating to do it when you need it.
As mentioned above, an address in the context of blockchains is like a mailbox. It's where crypto gets sent and received. On Ethereum and other EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) blockchains, it looks something like this:
0x1234...abcd
A long string starting with "0x" followed by a mix of forty letters and numbers. Every wallet has one. Every smart contract has one. If you've set up a wallet (and if you haven't, check the ALANA wallet guide), your public address is what you share when someone wants to send you something.
When you paste a wallet address into a block explorer, you'll see:
The balance (how much ETH or other currency the address holds)
A list of all transactions (sent and received)
Tokens held by that address
And any additional interactions with smart contracts
Addresses are pseudonymous. That means anyone can see the activity tied to an address, but they can't automatically see who owns it. Your wallet address is not your name unless you provide an identifier on purpose (e.g., an ENS domain). It's just a public-facing identifier. Some well-known addresses are labeled by the explorer (e.g., exchanges, famous smart contracts), but most aren't.
One thing to keep in mind: you might have multiple addresses. One for your main wallet, one for a hardware wallet, one for a specific project. Each one has its own history.
Every time something happens 'onchain' (abbreviation for 'on the blockchain'), it generates a transaction hash (also called a tx hash or TxID). It's a unique identifier for that specific transaction. It looks something like this:
0x8badf00d...
Another long string. When you paste it into a block explorer, you get the full picture of what happened. The key fields you'll see:
Status: Either "Success" (it went through) or "Fail" (it didn't). A failed transaction means the blockchain tried to execute it, but something went wrong. Important: even if a transaction fails, you still pay the gas fee. More on that in a second.
From: The address that initiated the transaction.
To: The address that received it. If the "To" field shows a smart contract address instead of a regular wallet, it means the transaction was interacting with a contract (minting a token, swapping on a decentralized exchange, voting in a DAO).
Value: How much ETH (or other currency) was sent.
Block: The block number where this transaction was recorded. Think of it as the page number in the record book.
Timestamp: When the transaction happened. Exact date and time.
A fun way to look at all of this and its workings is txStreet, an early tool that helped many newbies like us to visualize how the blockchain works:
Blockchain Transaction Visualizer - Txcity.io
Cryptocurrency (Bitcoin, Ethereum etc) blockchain live transaction visualizer. Every tx is a person, and they fill up buses which represent blocks.
Think of the tx hash as your proof of payment. If you ever need to verify that a transfer happened, this is what you share. Not a screenshot. Not a 'trust me.' The hash it is.
Gas is the fee you pay to use the blockchain. Every transaction costs gas. Sending ETH costs gas. Minting an NFT costs gas. Voting in a DAO costs gas. Even a failed transaction costs gas. Why? Because every transaction needs to be processed and verified by the network. Gas is what compensates the validators (the computers doing the verification work).
On Ethereum mainnet, gas can be expensive. On layer-2 networks like Base, Optimism, or Arbitrum, gas is much cheaper. Sometimes fractions of a cent. That's one of the reasons many projects (including some of us in the ALANA community) build on layer-2 chains.
When you look at a transaction on a block explorer, you'll see a few gas-related fields:
Gas Price: How much you paid per unit of gas (measured in "gwei," which is a tiny fraction of ETH).
Gas Used: How many units of gas the transaction consumed. Simple transfers use less gas. Complex smart contract interactions use more.
Transaction Fee: The total cost. Gas Price multiplied by Gas Used. This is what came out of your wallet on top of whatever you were sending.
Since 2021, Ethereum uses a system called EIP-1559, which splits the fee into two parts: a base fee (set by the network and automatically burned) and a priority fee, or 'tip' (paid to validators). You'll see both of these on Etherscan. The base fee varies based on network activity. As more people use Ethereum, the base fee increases. When it's quiet, it drops. If you pay an additional fee, the network may prioritize your request.
The practical takeaway: if you're not in a rush, you can wait for lower gas fees. Etherscan has a Gas Tracker that shows real-time estimates, and there is also another public good that can help with calculating gas fees in advance:
Here's where it gets interesting for us as creators.
When you look at a transaction, the 'Value' field shows ETH (or the chain's native token), the fiat value (e.g., US dollar), and even the historical fiat value at the time of the transaction. But most of the actions on Ethereum happen through tokens like USDC and DAI, which are ERC-20 (fungible), and ERC-721 tokens (non-fungible), which are most commonly known as NFTs. If you want to understand how these token standards work, the ALANA article on tokens and standards breaks it all down:
Token transfers show up in a separate section on the transaction page, usually labeled "ERC-20 Token Transfers" or "ERC-721 Token Transfers."
For example, if someone bought a piece of digital art using USDC, the main transaction might show 0 ETH in the value field (because no ETH changed hands). But if you scroll down to the token transfers section, you'll see the USDC moving from the buyer's wallet to the seller's, and the NFT moving from the seller to the buyer. Two transfers in one transaction. The ETH value looks empty, but a lot actually happened.
This is why checking only the "Value" field can be misleading. Always check the token transfers section to understand the full picture.
Something else to keep an eye on is the token's contract address. This is important for safety. Anyone can create a token called "USDC" or "DAI." The contract address is what tells you whether it's the real thing or a fake. Block explorers like Etherscan mark verified, well-known contracts, but it's a healthy habit to double-check:
This one confuses people the most and understandably so.
A regular transaction is something you initiate: you press "send" in your wallet, and a transaction is created. An internal transaction is something a smart contract triggers as part of executing your transaction.
Let's say you interact with a decentralized exchange to swap Token A for Token B. You send one transaction. But under the hood, the smart contract might make several moves: pulling Token A from your wallet, sending Token B back, distributing a fee to the protocol, and maybe sending a referral reward somewhere. Each of those is an internal transaction.
Internal transactions don't have their own tx hash. They live inside the parent transaction. On Etherscan, you'll find them under a tab called "Internal Transactions" on the transaction page.
Why does this matter? Two reasons.
First, if you're expecting to receive ETH from a smart contract (such as a DAO payout or a refund from a failed mint), it might appear as an internal transaction rather than a regular one. Your wallet balance changes, but if you're only looking at the main transaction list, you might not see where it came from.
Second, internal transactions are where more complex activity lives. If you want to understand what a smart contract actually did when you interacted with it, this is where you look.
You don't need to understand every internal transaction. But knowing they exist, and where to find them, helps you not get confused when the numbers don't seem to add up. At least that is what I am doing ;).
Let's walk through a real scenario. Say you minted a membership NFT using a smart contract (exactly like the process described in the ALANA no-code smart contracts webinar).
You'd see:
Your address in the "From" field. The smart contract address in the "To" field. The tx hash as the unique identifier for the whole thing. The gas fee you paid to process it. An ERC-721 token transfer showing the NFT moving from the contract to your wallet. And possibly an internal transaction if the contract distributed part of the payment somewhere else.
All of this is public. All of this is verifiable. All of this is permanent. That's the whole point. Blockchains don't ask you to trust anyone. It asks you to verify. And a block explorer is the tool that makes verification possible for anyone, not just developers.
Pick the explorer that matches the chain you're using:
Ethereum: etherscan.io
Polygon: polygonscan.com
Base: basescan.org
Optimism: optimistic.etherscan.io
Arbitrum: arbiscan.io
Solana: solscan.io
Now go find your own wallet address. Paste it in. Look at your transaction history. Check the gas you paid. See which tokens you hold. That's your first read. And once you can read the chain, you don't need to take anyone's word for anything.
And whenever you need a hand, the ALANA team and community are always here to help. Just reach out on any of our channels or, even better, join our group on Telegram:
https://t.me/+GFQH3yhIAJc0MTcy
Happy Week, ALANA Adventurers!
This article was authored by Sogand Nobahar, a DAO member of The ALANA Project.
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