There are two most important applications for public blockchain, one is wallet another is blockchain explorer. Wallet helps you to make a transaction, blockchain explorer helps you to get data on the blockchain. Etherscan is the most popular blockchain browser for Ethereum.

As we know, the most important properties of a public blockchain include immutable and transparent. For developers, you can retrieve data using Ethereum clients like Go-Ethereum/Parity or using web3.js library. However, it’s not practical for non-developers to use Ethereum clients or web3.js library. The need for a blockchain browser like Etherscan is important for a user without coding skills.

We can get started with using Etherscan in three steps.

Check balance and transaction history for an address. Prevent your self from scams. Stay away from tainted accounts.

Check balance and transaction history for an address.

As an example, I have an account, some projects send me some “airdrop” tokens. How to check which tokens I have now?

Let’s check my account on Etherscan.io

As we know, all data on Ethereum is transparent, even you are a co-founder of Ethereum.

Vitalik Buterin, a famous co-founder of Ethereum have 2 public addresses on Ethereum.

Vb : 0xAb5801a7D398351b8bE11C439e05C5B3259aeC9B Vb2: 0x1Db3439a222C519ab44bb1144fC28167b4Fa6EE6

Try to check account these 2 accounts by your self.

Prevent your self from scams.

There are a lot of scams on the internet. One example is like this

Sent 1 ETH to mining poor address “0x5197Ef1C60a693051E2a1fEb097Dc101516Ab0df”, you’ll get token XXX with lower price. You can earn billion USD through selling these token in exchanges. Example of a scam

I saw this scam in one telegram group with more than 100 thousand people. There are a bunch of people claim they earn billion USD. Then, I check the account “0x5197Ef1C60a693051E2a1fEb097Dc101516Ab0df”.

Only 58 transactions in the past 10 days. Around 324 ETH send to this address. It’s impossible to get a billion USD through 324ETH.

Also, you can check where all the ETH go. You can find out it goes to 2 different accounts. Around 19 ETH stays in one account, another 320 ETH go to 10 accounts and then goes to one account in several steps. Most ETH was sent to one exchange in the past 10 days.

Stay away from tainted accounts.

Etherscan update a new function called ETHProtect on April 16, 2020.

The function monitors the Ethereum transaction events. If an account identified as Hacks/ Scams/ Exploits/ Suspicious fraudulent activities, you will see a warning remark.

There’s an example, an account link to “Upbit’s Exchange Hack”.

You can see the taint address start from “0xa09871aeadf4994ca12f5c0b6056bbd1d343c029” to “0xf52baeb41abf6a9001f42246d5a3a9e2677bc8f5”

If you try to buy some ETH, you need to check if the owner’s account is taint. You may break the law if you buy asset from a tainted account.

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