Block Explorer Introduction

Overview

The Kaleido block explorer is an environment-specific console that provides realtime and historical snapshots of the blockchain.

It can be leveraged for both high-level analytics (e.g. chain height, commonly called contracts, transaction rate, etc.) and more granular insights (e.g. block contents, transaction hashes, sending accounts, etc.).

Search Bar

Use the search bar to jump directly to a specific subset of the ledger. The search bar accepts three valid inputs:

• Block Number – The number of the desired block for inspection. For example, enter 0 to see the contents of the chain’s genesis block. Bear in mind that the Kaleido consensus mechanisms may cut blocks regardless of transaction presence (PoA and IBFT output multiple blocks in a minute). As a result, if you are operating in an environment with low transaction throughput and running PoA or IBFT consensus, a large allotment of blocks will be devoid of transactions.
• Contract address – callable address of an Ethereum smart contract deployed within the environment.
• Transaction hash – The ID of a specific transaction. A transaction implies that byte code has been executed by the EVM. These include deployments of smart contracts and subsequent invocations.

Blocks

By default, the explorer home screen displays the 25 most recent blocks on the chain. As mentioned above, blocks are minted in accordance with the consensus protocol’s system configuration and do not necessarily contain transactions. Click the block number to see the contents of a specific block. Each block will contain:

• Block number – height on the chain
• Time – ISO timestamp when the block was minted
• Hash – a hash of the block
• Parent Hash – a hash of the preceding block on the chain
• SHA-3 Uncles – SHA-3 hash of the uncle’s block
• Mined by – the Ethereum account credited with minting the block
• Gas Used – compute expended to mine the block
• Transactions – if applicable, the block’s transaction hash(es) are listed in order of execution at the bottom of the page

Transactions

Transactions are listed chronologically with the most recent transaction at the top of the list. The transaction table exposes truncated values for transaction hash and the sending account. Additionally, if the transaction is a smart contract deployment, it is denoted with a New Contract Created tag. Each transaction will contain:

• Hash – a hash of the transaction serving as the transaction’s ID
• Block – the block containing the transaction
• Time – ISO timestamp when the transaction was executed by the EVM
• From – the Ethereum account sending the transaction
• To – the Ethereum account or smart contract the transaction targeted
• Gas Provided – the allocated compute to execute the transaction
• Input Data – the function hash and 32 byte argument passed to the contract.