Solscan 101: Everything You Need to Know About Solscan Explorer

We’ve been taught that blockchains like Binance Smart Chain or Solana are entirely transparent. But if you’ve ever stared at a wallet address with no clue what you’re looking at, you’re not alone.

Fortunately, tools like Solscan swoop in to save the day. They allow you to peek behind the blockchain curtain and access all information fed inside. Solscan is designed specifically for the Solana chain, letting you in on the data like transaction hash, smart contracts, a wallet’s holdings, minting history, or just snooping around one of the fastest blockchains on the planet.

Let us snoop around Solscan some more and see what exactly it is, what it is suitable for, and how to use it for specific purposes.

What is Solscan?

Solscan is a user-friendly blockchain explorer that lets you see everything happening on the Solana blockchain. It provides a range of information like transaction details, wallet activity, smart contract, and a whole lot more.

The main reasons to use the Solana chain, and, by extension, casinos that support Solana, are its lightning speed and ridiculously cheap transactions. Solscan is therefore essential if you want to keep up with all the action.

And did we mention that Solscan is completely free to use?

Use Cases of Solscan

Right, here’s the transparency bit. You can use Solscan to:

• Track Transactions: Enter a transaction ID (called a ‘signature’ on Solana), and you’ll get the whole story: who sent what, when, where, and how much it cost.
• See Inside Wallets: Solscan wallet tracker allows you to see a wallet’s SOL balance, token holdings, transaction history, and even what NFTs it owns.
• Explore Smart Contracts: Solana calls them ‘programs,’ but the idea’s the same. You can check out which dApps are live, what they’re doing, and who deployed them.
• Track NFTs: A monkey, a pixel art, or your favorite gaming asset, Solscan lets you track ownership and minting history in seconds.
• Validator Stats: Node runners can see validator performance, rewards, and how decentralized the network really is.
• Fee and Network Analytics: Solana’s fees are tiny, but they’re still worth watching during high traffic times. Solscan shows you live network stats and fee estimates.

How to Use Solscan

Using Solscan is as easy as copy-paste.

For starters, head over to solscan.io and you’ll see a page with a bunch of numbers on it. That’s your network activity given in real-time, a snapshot of all that’s happening on the chain right now: blocks, transactions, validators, everything.

You’ll also see a big, welcoming search bar wrapped inside that signature Solana color pattern. Just drop any transaction signature, wallet address, token ID, or program ID into the bar, and you’re in.

How to Track Transactions

Each Solana transaction has a unique ID (signature) by which you can track everything about it. And how to find transaction hash on solscan explorer? Easy, that’s the longest number on the transaction page.

An example of a Solana signature would be:

To get access to its information, just paste the transaction ID into the search bar, and on the Transaction Detail page, you’ll extract information like its status, confirmation time, the parties involved, the fees paid, and even whether the transaction was triggered by the app (and which one).

How to Access Wallet History

Solscan wallet tracker lets you read your wallet’s history or peek to see what a whale’s been up to. Again, just paste the wallet address into the search bar to see the SOL balance and the wallet’s complete transaction history. But not just that; Solscan tracks other tokens stored in a wallet, including custom tokens used by dApps.

How to Check Smart Contracts

Solana calls them ‘programs,’ but that’s essentially the same thing.

To access smart contracts on the Solscan explorer, enter the program ID to extract information on interaction history,  who deployed it, what token was used, etc. It’s a super easy way to check whether a new token or app is legit or just a rug waiting to happen.

How to Monitor Fees on Solana

Solana’s big flex is how cheap it is; we’re talking less than a cent per transaction most of the time. But it never hurts to check before you pull the trigger on a transaction.

To do it, head over to the Analytics tab and locate the Fee Tracker Dashboard page. There you’ll see the latest transaction and the fee paid for it, as well as average fees by transaction, both regular and priority.

How to Monitor NFTs

In the Leaderboard drop-down menu, right below the Token tab, you’ll see the NFT tab. Here, you can check the blockchain data on marketplaces like MagicEden2 or CoralCube, or check what new NFTs are added to the network and when.

Let’s Wrap It Up

Solscan is for the Solana chain what BscScan is for Binance. It’s a great little tool used for tracking transactions, reading wallets, checking token activities, or sniffing around to see what’s new on the network. And we barely even touched on functionalities like in-depth staking activity, stablecoin usage, or the analytics side of it.

No matter if you’re a crypto casual, an NFT collector, a DeFi pro, or a crypto casino player trying to track your SOL, Solscan gives you everything you need to stay in the know.

Or even pull ahead, if you play your cards right.