What do you miss in block explorers

[TheArchaeologist]

I think most of us will use block explorers once in a while. I personally use them for fast checking things like a transaction based on a hash, get the height of the latest found block, see if an address has been used and/or what the balance is, etc.

But this got me wondering if there's anything you miss in current block explorers? Anything you would like to see answered by using a decent explorer but just can't seem to do with any at the moment? Or anything in particular a specific explorer do has to offer while others don't?

Looking forward to your replies/ideas.

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[coupable]

There is no big differences between explorers, but i personally prefer using Blockchair because it explores many blockchains like Eth and Cardano.. After being a blockchain.com user for years, but stop using it because it was the last to support segwit addresses.
For me, as an arabic user, i wish to see an explorer using the arabic language.
Blockchain.com explorer is avalaible in 21 languages, Blockchair with 6 languages. And some of them are not widely used like Italiano and Polski, while the arabic language is used in all middle east countries (including Israel) and north africa.
I know that it's not that easy to translate many technical terms, but none gave it a try. Almost all blockchain technical concepts are in the bitcoin whitepaper, and there is an arabic version available of it.

[joniboini]

I kinda want block explorers to include something like what mempool.space did, which is showing how many txs included in a block and the lowest fee in each candidate block. Blockchair is showing "prority" for this but it's not clear whether your tx is included in the next block or not.

[mk4]

Personally on the top of my head, I currently can't think of much. I just wished there was an extra-lightweight version of Blockchain.com/Blockstream.info/Blockchair/etc so loading speeds will be significantly faster when using Tor.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Anything that is going to increase my privacy when I use it. Perhaps the ability to look up a dozen or so transactions at once, and display all the results on the same page. By doing so I can hide the actual transaction I am interested in among a bunch of others I don't care about, so the block explorer cannot link my browser session to a specific transaction.

Having any page with transactions or addresses displayed auto-refresh every minute or so for all users, so again, the explorer is not aware that the user is obviously waiting for a transaction to be made or to confirm.

And dark mode. Every website in existence should have dark mode.

[crwth]

Personally, I don’t use the blockchain explorer often just to see transactions come to go and be confirmed something like that that is related to me. I don’t check Clock Heights or something like that when there is a competition where the goal is to predict the blockchain height at a particular time, then I will check.

What I would like to see in a blockchain explorer would be the “whois” Type of information. Because they’re a lot of people who use possible scam addresses and it is already posted somewhere on the Internet, I think it would be ideal to see that it already is flagged or not or something like that.

[logfiles]

A bitcoin transaction analysis tool that can help link addresses through their transactions in a flow chart format. This feature combined with walletexplorer.com's address grouping and wallet labeling would be great having in a block explorer.

I remember seeing the bitcoin address linking through the use of the transaction a flow chart in one of the block explorers but not sure what happened. Maybe the explorer closed down as I can no longer recall it.

[tippytoes]

Personally on the top of my head, I currently can't think of much. I just wished there was an extra-lightweight version of Blockchain.com/Blockstream.info/Blockchair/etc so loading speeds will be significantly faster when using Tor.

I think on my end, like when I checked blockchair, it shows the priority of your transaction. If it is possible to include also the approximate waiting time to get 1 confirmation at least. Maybe not exact but according to the previous history of the mempool, I guess they can calculate the waiting time.

[logfiles]

I think on my end, like when I checked blockchair, it shows the priority of your transaction. If it is possible to include also the approximate waiting time to get 1 confirmation at least. Maybe not exact but according to the previous history of the mempool, I guess they can calculate the waiting time.

It's not easy to approximate the time when the next block can be mined since it's very random. The average time is 10 minutes but the next block confirmation can happen with seconds to over 1 hour after the previous one was confirmed. This probably is the reason such approximation is not there on block explorers because it can give you false hope.

I like  btc.bitaps.com, It even plays a notification sound every time a new block is mined, something that's not found in most block explorers.

[pooya87]

the problem i have is with when you check an address on a block explorer and it shows the entire inputs and outputs for each transaction's. and when the address has send/received a lot of this type of transactions with lots of input/outputs it becomes tedious to go through the history of that address. and that is unfortunately what most block explorers do these days.
instead it should be simplified, the inputs should be hidden except for the first 2 or 3 with a button saying there is more and the outputs should only show those that involve the address you check not all.

[tranthidung]

1miau has his good thread on List of useful Bitcoin block explorers and there are subjective ratings on those explorers as well.

Personally, I would like to use the three explorers:

• Blockchair.com
• btc.com
• Blockstream.info

The first one also gives us blockchain data, that has been used by LoyceV and is stored in loyce.club (Bitcoin block data available in CSV format). One more thing I like from the explorer is it gives newbies an indicator on priority of their unconfirmed transactions.

Blockchain.com is used by many people but their stats are incorrect sometimes and it does not display well on mobile (info for transaction hashes are not displayed fully, something are missing from the screen)

For all explorers: Use them with Tor to protect privacy.

[mk4]

Tor and fast doesn't go together, you only can choose one . But some of them have .onion domain and can run without JS.

Yea sure, and it's to be expected. But light-weight websites still load faster though(obviously due to having less stuff to load/render). Like how Blockchain.com's ticker API[1] is faster to load than their main prices page[2] simply due to the former having only text. I'm looking for something pretty similar but I get why we don't have such a block explorer as I doubt there will be much demand.

[1] https://blockchain.info/en/ticker
[2] https://www.blockchain.com/prices

[DougM]

....
But this got me wondering if there's anything you miss in current block explorers? Anything you would like to see answered by using a decent explorer but just can't seem to do with any at the moment? Or anything in particular a specific explorer do has to offer while others don't?

Looking forward to your replies/ideas.

  I echo the others comments like a graphical explorer would be cool to see done properly. I would also like a full detail option that includes the full raw block and all the fields such as extraNonce,, nonce etc.  Hex and json formats also be handy like some have already.  How come you asking? Building a new one?   

[stompix]

the problem i have is with when you check an address on a block explorer and it shows the entire inputs and outputs for each transaction's. and when the address has send/received a lot of this type of transactions with lots of input/outputs it becomes tedious to go through the history of that address. and that is unfortunately what most block explorers do these days.

Probably this is the one most annoying thing when you try to have a look at some addresses history, clicking in a series of transactions I always at some point click on the wrong output and end up with nothing and have to redo the steps.
But what I would really want is for an explorer to have the possibility of opening an account and once logged you would have the possibility of tagging certain addresses but the tags would be kept private, unlike what blockchain was/is using. It's a pain in the ass to check my bookmarks every time somebody comes with a stupid whale alert and show him is not a whale but Binance or Coinbase moving funds from one of its wallets to another, as whale alert has a habit of "forgetting" about some wallet when they need to go on a spam tweet rampage.
Or cases like this one. 

Of course, it would be more of an analytics service once this would be available but also an option to search if two addresses have a linked history would be amazing, although I can see how this would soon backfire.

[FinneysTrueVision]

A bitcoin transaction analysis tool that can help link addresses through their transactions in a flow chart format. This feature combined with walletexplorer.com's address grouping and wallet labeling would be great having in a block explorer.

I remember seeing the bitcoin address linking through the use of the transaction a flow chart in one of the block explorers but not sure what happened. Maybe the explorer closed down as I can no longer recall it.

The desktop version of oxt.me has something like that but it's very slow and requires to sign up with an email address to use it.

[Little Mouse]

I would happy to see the profit calculator in a block explorer. For example, I have one address where I save a little BTC. For the profit calculation purpose, I have to keep seperate records. What if it was possible to get through explorer? An option where we will be able to see the sum value of when transacted and as of today. So, if I receive 0.01 BTC for four times and the price was different on each times, what will be the sum of when transacted.
Another edition can be list of unique addresses where an address sent BTC and receive BTC.
Another can be tagging all the known addresses of different service like exchanges, gambling sites etc if known.

[TheArchaeologist]

Thanks all for responding. I am currently in the process of creating a block explorer myself and happy with all the input. If anyone is interested I can post a couple of screenshots of the current progress.

[Twentyonepaylots]

By doing so I can hide the actual transaction I am interested in among a bunch of others I don't care about, so the block explorer cannot link my browser session to a specific transaction.

I find it really a smart idea, privacy after privacy this is what a block explorer should be, less click equals less links. I guess we should have an explorer that will require just only the time frame when the transaction was made, I think it will be better since every transaction has its timestamp.

And dark mode. Every website in existence should have dark mode.

Yeaaaah dark mode is 1000x better than having a plain white, even my facebook and twitter app is in dark mode, and my phone theme is dark, I don't know I find dark theme more stylish and relaxing.

[o_e_l_e_o]

I guess we should have an explorer that will require just only the time frame when the transaction was made

That's another great idea actually. The most common use of block explorers is people looking up a transaction which they've just made and waiting to see when it confirms. Perhaps a "show the last 10/50/100 received unconfirmed transactions" button, which would let you scroll back another several pages in case you were too slow to catch your transaction. You could make it auto update whenever the next block is found to prevent people from continuously refreshing a page of 100 transactions to save on bandwidth.

I don't know I find dark theme more stylish and relaxing.

It's just easier on the eyes, and the less bright artificial light you get the better for your sleep. I would also suggest everyone to use a blue light filter in the evenings on their devices.

[erikoy]

It's just easier on the eyes, and the less bright artificial light you get the better for your sleep. I would also suggest everyone to use a blue light filter in the evenings on their devices.

I have tried this feature and yes it really work great and easy for me to use my device at night. This is good thing to have this forum. we can learn so much about others that are doing and interest. Most of the time.they shared it here like this one. I now gets a good interface on my device. Anyway, is there any other things you can suggest? I think  can get more and better ideas from you. Just do it for free of course because I do not want to spend money just for.this.