About this Episode

In our fifth episode, Nicole Zhu and Joe Petrowski talk to Emiel Sebastiaan, WEB3SCAN CEO, about Polkascan, an open-source block explorer that allows any Substrate-based blockchain project to have a block explorer. They discuss the Polkadot multi-chain explorer, how a DAO could fund block explorer services, Polkascan vs. Polkadot UI, and the nitty-gritty of how one actually goes about extracting data from a blockchain.

Links:

https://www.web3scan.com

https://polkascan.io

https://medium.com/polkascan

https://github.com/polkascan

https://twitter.com/polkascan

Highlights:

01:32 - How Emiel got into block explorers

04:38 - Block explorer use cases

06:26 - Getting meaningful data out of Substrate vs. Bitcoin and Ethereum

08:54 - Specialized and upgradable runtimes with Substrate

13:01 - Out-of-the-box block explorer support for parachains

16:00 - Polkascan PRE and Polkascan MC

19:38 - How Polkascan uses archive nodes

21:51 - Tools Polkascan uses

26:40 - Performance benchmarks for block explorers

31:40 - Scalability, roadmap, and managing 10-terabyte databases

37:58 - The roadmap to paid services

45:34 - DAOs as customers

52:18 - Polkascan vs. Polkadot UI

57:34 - A multi-chain universe