Blockchains or distributed ledger technology (DLT)-enabled platforms and the activity that occurs within them can become a bit overwhelming for the average user, even if they’re tech-savvy or know-how “decentralized” systems are supposed to work.
Blockchain explorers, which allow us to view cryptocurrency or DLT-based transactions, have been available for almost as long as the Bitcoin (BTC) blockchain has been around (since around 2009). However, the blockchain explorers we have today are a lot more advanced or sophisticated than just the basic tools that came out in 2009 and early 2010s.
During the past decade, software developers have been focused on enhancing or optimizing the user experience (UX) and crypto industry participants have been helping educate users about the activity that takes place on blockchain-powered platforms.
The Avalanche team, which is focused on developing distributed applications, including those involving the fast-growing decentralized finance (DeFi) sector, confirms that it had launched the Avalanche Explorer earlier this year. However, the development team says they were also looking for an independent party to create a practical tool that would give users “a unique perspective” and expand their existing options.
The Avalanche team has introduced Avascan, a blockchain explorer that allows users to browse different blockchain networks, monitor transactions, view the activity of validators, check on what delegators are doing, manage assets, and check up on smart contracts issued on the Avalanche network.
As mentioned in a blog post by Ava Labs, which supports the development of the Avalanche protocol, the Avascan team is a recipient of an Avalanche-X grant. The initiative has also engaged certain members of the Avalanche developer community, in order to further develop Avascan.
As noted in the announcement:
“Avascan features a clean, sleek user interface to simplify the experience. Within the landing page, users are able to see all of the high-level statistics for Avalanche like the number of blockchains, average transactions per second, percentage staking rewards, and more.”
The Avascan software has been developed with certain design considerations including optimal speed, an adequate level of privacy, Open APIs, ability to scale, and community engagement is also a key priority.
The Ava Labs blog post noted:
“Since the launch of Avalanche-X a few months ago, we’re seeing more and more grant recipients nearing the final stretch of their project development. Avascan is just the latest of many … projects that are transitioning from building to evangelizing their products to the world. …. With more tools and decentralized applications or dApps coming online every week, we’re thrilled to see Avalanche enabling developers to build without limits.”