Unit 1 · Level 1 · Block explorers
Reading a transaction
Open any transaction page and the same skeleton appears: From (who signed it), To (who or what received it), Value (native coin moved), Fee (what the sender paid the network), and Status (success or failed). Learn to scan these five in order and you can read most transactions in ten seconds flat.
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What you get asked
Match each transaction field to its meaning
From, To, Value, Fee, Status: your five-second scan. Everything deeper (logs, internal moves) builds on this skeleton.
A transaction shows status 'Failed'. What happened to the gas fee?
Gas pays for computation, and the computation ran; it just ended in a revert. Failed transactions are the chain's version of paying for a taxi that hits a dead end.
A simple ETH transfer uses 21,000 gas at a gas price of 50 gwei, so it burns 1,050,000 gwei = 0.00105 ETH. With ETH at €2,000, what was the fee in euros?
Gas used × gas price = 1,050,000 gwei = 0.00105 ETH, and 0.00105 × €2,000 = €2.10. Same maths works for any transaction; the explorer shows you every input.
The Value field only counts the ___ coin (like ETH). Token transfers are recorded elsewhere on the page.
A classic beginner trap: you send someone 500 USDC and the Value field says 0 ETH. Tokens live in contracts, so their movements show up in the logs, covered next lesson.
Why do explorers show how many confirmations a transaction has?
Every new block buries your transaction deeper under fresh fingerprints. A few confirmations in, rewriting it would mean redoing the whole chain's work; that's finality growing in real time. 🐜
The rest of this unit
The whole ledger is public. Learn to open it and read it.