It is possible to quickly look up any crypto address online, as blockchain is transparent. But only to the extent that anyone can see incoming and outgoing transactions but can’t find out who is the owner of the given cryptocurrency wallet.
Viewing crypto addresses online can provide you with some valuable information. Not only about the wallet’s content, but it can also help you make better investing choices.
This article will tell you How to look up a crypto address and learn as much as possible from it. Let’s dive in!
How to Look up Crypto Address
To look up any crypto address you want, you first need to visit its block explorer.
A block explorer is an online tool that enables you to search for information about a blockchain. You can say it is a search engine, like Google, but for searching a particular piece of data on the blockchain.
The main activity that happens on a blockchain is transactions. When you send cryptocurrencies from your wallet, that makes one transaction. The additional information you can read from the block explorer is derived from transactions.
You will often encounter block explorers designed specifically for a particular blockchain. As etherscan made for Ethereum or Polygonscan for Polygon (MATIC).
But there do exist universal blockchain explorers like Blockchair.
Step 1: Open Block Explorer
The first step of looking up any crypto address is finding out which blockchain the address belongs to or opening a universal explorer.
Let’s choose the easier route and open a universal blockchain explorer – Blockchair.
Step 2: Enter your Crypto Address
Once you land on a homepage, there will be a search bar somewhere. The search bar is the main feature of every block explorer, so it should be visible.
As you can see, it is in the middle of the screen in our example.
Copy the crypto address you want to look up, paste it into the search bar, and hit enter.
Step 3: Gain Information from the Address Overview
You’ll land on the address overview. We can break this down into several parts.
First, you will see a wallet balance overview.
This section contains information about your current balance and the total amount the address has received and sent.
On some block explorers, you can also see a chart overview of your balance.
Every block explorer will also include a “Transaction History” section.
In this section, you can see all the incoming and outgoing transactions as well as the transaction status. I.e., whether the transaction is confirmed or not.
Each transaction will include its Transaction Hash or Transaction ID. You can also look up this TXID to see more details about the transaction.
The whole block explorer overview is really intuitive, and you can click on any wallet address and jump right to its overview, just like you can click through all transaction IDs.
How to Read Block Explorer
There’s more to discover from the block explorer than you might think.
Crypto Addresses
First, you can find all the information we have already disclosed. By looking up a crypto address, you can trace who sent what to whom, when, and how much of what was sent. Simply put, you can see that wallet A sent 10 BTC to wallet B 10 hours ago.
But don’t worry, no one can tell who owns that one crypto wallet containing 10,000 BTC. The exception to this rule is if the block explorer has an address labeled. This usually happens with large addresses that belong to centralized exchanges.
In the screenshot above, you can see that this wallet address is labeled as Coinbase’s.
Transactions
By clicking on any transaction ID, you can find out additional information, such as how much was the gas fee or swap fee.
You can also see the current status of the transaction. Whether or not it is confirmed.
Blocks and Chains
On a blockchain, transactions are batched into groups known as blocks. You can think of blocks as a box full of transactions moving on a conveyor belt in a factory.
First, transactions sent at one moment get batched into one of these blocks, where they’re waiting for confirmation. Transactions are waiting in a “Mem Pool” to be picked up by miners or stakers for confirmation. Transactions are confirmed by miners or stakers depending on whether the blockchain is Proof of Work or Proof of Stake.
And you can watch this whole process on the block explorer.
In the photo above, you can see the current latest block. This block is still waiting at the beginning of the conveyor belt – in the Mem pool. And you can check all the transactions that are included in this block.
At this stage, there is still a chance to cancel your crypto transaction, as it is still waiting.
Once your block gets picked up, you are waiting for confirmation.
Every wallet requires a different number of confirmations. Every one confirmed block after yours equals one confirmation. The number is usually higher to protect from double-spending.
But let’s look back on a single block. After a block is mined, we can also read from the block explorer how much the person who mined it has been rewarded.
To be precise, we are showing you the block details of Ethereum. And Ethereum is Proof of Stake, thus not the miner, but what stakers got as a reward.
Smart Contracts
You can also see the code contained within a smart contract. Let’s take a look at a random smart contract.
You can see that this token – HEX Black (HEXB) is held by 29 different wallets. Its maximum supply is 1,000,000,000,000, and there were 42 transfers in total.
As you can see in the lower bar, you can check all the transfers, check the content of all wallets that hold HEX Black, and look at all transactions that happened on decentralized marketplaces. Or see the whole code under the “Contract” tab.
Conclusion
As you can see, Blockchain explorers offer a lot more than you might ever think. You can use all of this information to analyze different coins and make better investing decisions.
It can be a lot to take in. And if you don’t fully understand some of these features, don’t worry; you still have plenty of time to learn and be earlier than others.