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Available Tezos Explorers

Coming soon: A more in-depth comparison of all available Tezos explorers.

The purpose of this chapter is to list the main explorers of the Tezos blockchain and presents the pros and cons of some.

Tezos Blockchain Explorers​

Indexers potential features​

  • Full-text search in smart contract storage. For example, you can retrieve a smart contract by specifying a part of the Michelson code of the contract.
  • Michelson decoding: The Michelson code is interpreted to be presented in a more readable way.
  • Bigmap support Allows you to access and observe the content of Big Maps in the storage of smart contracts.
  • Mempool access: some explorers provide access to the content of the mempool. The mempool is made of all transactions that have been submitted for inclusion in the chain but have not yet been included in a block by a baker.
  • Available Server APIs
    • Explorer API for accessing individual objects of the explorer user interface via API calls.
    • Time-series APIs only contain numeric data types and are indexed by one date field. Through API calls, users can retrieve the entire time series as well as a slice of it. It is great for aggregate counters and statistics over specific fields.
    • Tables API can include various unsorted data types (strings, numbers, dates, etc.) and can be filtered by different fields.

Blockwatch TzIndex / TzStats​

TzStats was the first Tezos Analytics Explorer, extending the functionality of traditional block explorers with comprehensive data analytics.

Homepage of TzStats

FIGURE 1: TzStats Explorer

Pros

  • stand-alone, no database installation needed
  • Michelson decoding and full Bigmap support
  • time-series and table APIs

Cons

  • no mempool access
  • no full-text search

Baking Bad TzKT Indexer​

TzKT provides a high level of data detail, user-friendly interface for both desktop and mobile devices, and free open-source lightweight Tezos blockchain indexer, developing by the Baking Bad team. Baking Bad is a software development company and active Tezos tools contributor. TzKT was released in 2019.

Homepage of TzKt

FIGURE 1: TzKT Explorer

Pros

  • feature-rich API
  • mempool observing
  • DEX trading
  • live data via WebSocket
  • true open-source

Cons

  • no translations (English only)
  • no detailed statistics charts
  • no dark theme

The Baking Bad team has developed another tool, Better Call Dev, which allows the exploration of smart contracts.

Nomadic Labs Indexer​

Nomadic Labs Indexer is the first indexer made by the Tezos team in July 2019.

Gitlab page of the Tezos explorer by Nomadic Labs

FIGURE 1: GitLab Nomadic Labs Indexer

Pros

  • made by the Tezos core team
  • same data structures as a Tezos node

Cons

  • ETL only, no API server, no User Interface (command line only)
  • no smart contract support

Arronax​

Arronax is Cyrptonomic Conseil's block explorer and was released in beta in April 2020.

Homepage of Arronax

FIGURE 1: Arronax Explorer

Pros

  • API server
  • smart filter and full-text search in contracts & storage

Cons

  • limited statistics and time-series data