Steemit Crypto Academy- Blockchain Wallet- Chapter-1-Homework

Hi Steemains, first of all, I would like to thank all the professors for this excellent effort in communicating correct and accurate information to people looking to advance their knowledge in the crypto world. As a teacher, I would like to quote Paul Valerie that said "Education is not limited to childhood and adolescence. Education is not limited to school. Our whole life is our education." So stay calm and follow your kind teachers. Today I chose to do my favorite teacher @sapwood 's homework regarding blockchain explorers.

Introduction :

As everyone knows, in Bitcoin and in most cryptocurrency systems, all transactions are written on a blockchain. This blockchain is maintained and updated by all the complete nodes of the network: to access it, one solution would therefore be to install your own node on your personal computer.

However, this solution is not practical at all and a person who uses Bitcoin every now and then won't even bother to consider it. Fortunately, there are services that allow you to access blockchain content without having to set up anything on your computer: these are block explorers.

How do I find the block explorer of any Blockchain?

Personally, to find all the explorers recognized for a given cryptocurrency, I use the Coinmarketcap site. For example, for ether (ETH), 5 explorers are listed on the site, including the very good Etherscan which also allows to observe the tokens exchanged on the Ethereum chain such as the BAT.

Source

There are many block explorers, among the best known, we can nevertheless quote:

Blockchain.com (formerly blockchain.info), which gives you the ability to observe the chains of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Bitcoin Cash.

Blockchair , which allows you to explore the blockchains of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Dash, Bitcoin SV, Dogecoin (much wow), and Groestlcoin. Personally I prefer it because it is one of the best block explorers in the ecosystem, and which claims to not collect personal data on its users.

Blockstream.info , which provides you with the information related to Bitcoin's chain as well as its Liquid side chain. It is also possible to observe the transactions of the Bitcoin test network.

BlockCypher , which is a block explorer for Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dash, Grin, and Dogecoin.

How do I check the number of confirmations?

(blockchair case) :

The explorer will inform you of the status of your transaction: when your transaction has been confirmed, that is to say included in a block, it will display the number of confirmations as well as the height of the block, namely its number in chain. In our case it only took a few minutes, but this waiting time can sometimes be much longer.

The number of confirmations measures the degree of security of a transaction: the higher it is, the more you can have confidence in the finality of your transaction.

The different levels generally cited for Bitcoin (BTC) are:

0 confirmation (which takes a few seconds): the transaction is verified by the network nodes, which then generally refuse any transaction spending the same funds.

1 confirmation (which takes place in 10 minutes on average): the transaction is included in the last block of the chain. So it is almost certain that it will be valid forever.

2 confirmations (20 minutes wait on average): a new block is mined following the block containing the transaction, adding proof of work above the latter.

6 confirmations (1 hour wait on average): a chain of 5 blocks has been mined following the block containing the transaction. The risk of reorganizing the chain is almost zero, because such a reorganization would require a huge amount of computing power. The transaction is therefore considered irreversible.

How do I find the transaction hash, sender address, receiver's address, network fees of a particular transaction?

A block explorer not only allows you to get details about an address: it also allows you to access information about a transaction. In Bitcoin and other similar protocols, each transaction is linked to its cryptographic hash, which is called an identifier. This identifier is a string of 64 hexadecimal characters which allows this transaction to be found.

In the explorer, it suffices to copy this identifier in the search bar to be able to access the transaction. In our case, the reception transaction is the one with the identifier

Once the search has started, you will be redirected to the page describing the transaction. Note that you can also simply click on the identifier present on the address page to achieve the same result.

How do I check whether a wallet address is valid for a network or not(using Block explorer)?

To do this, go to the explorer page (like Blockchair) and copy your receiving address into the search bar. In our example, this is the address 35hK24tcLEWcgNA4JxpvbkNkoAcDGqQPsP.

Normally you should be redirected to the address page in question. On this page you will have at your disposal information concerning this address, including in particular its current balance, the number of transactions involving this address, the number of unspent transactional outputs . By scrolling down the details, you will also get the type of address, the program (script) used to block the funds, the amount of cryptocurrency that has passed through it, etc.

Conclusion :

Block explorers make very important resources available to the general public. Nevertheless, they do it for free and one wonders what their business model is. It is therefore very important to keep in mind that these services may collect and resell your personal data.