Exploring Blockchain Data

Overview

Query and analyze blockchain data across multiple EVM-compatible networks including Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, and BSC. Supports transaction lookups, address balance checks, block inspection, token balance queries, transaction history retrieval, and whale wallet tracking via a unified CLI.

Prerequisites

• Python 3.8+ with requests and web3 libraries installed (pip install requests web3)
• Etherscan API key (free tier provides 5 requests/second; set via ETHERSCANAPIKEY environment variable)
• Optional: API keys for Polygonscan, Arbiscan, and other chain-specific explorers for higher rate limits
• blockchainexplorer.py CLI script, chainclient.py, and token_resolver.py modules available in the plugin directory
• RPC endpoint access (public endpoints work; dedicated providers like Alchemy, Infura, Chainstack, or QuickNode recommended for reliability)

Instructions

1. Set the Etherscan API key as an environment variable: export ETHERSCANAPIKEY= to unlock higher rate limits beyond the default 5 requests/second.
2. Run python blockchain_explorer.py tx to look up a transaction by hash, returning status, block number, from/to addresses, value transferred, and gas details.
3. Append --detailed to the transaction query to decode the function call, identify the interacting protocol, and display input parameters.
4. Specify --chain polygon, --chain arbitrum, or --chain bsc to query transactions on alternative EVM chains when the hash is not found on Ethereum.
5. Run python blockchain_explorer.py address
   to check the native token balance and total transaction count for a wallet.
6. Add --history --limit 50 to the address query to retrieve the most recent 50 transactions with timestamps, values, and counterparties.
7. Add --tokens to the address query to list all ERC-20 token holdings with balances, symbols, and USD values via CoinGecko price resolution.
8. Run python blockchainexplorer.py block latest to inspect the most recent block, or python blockchainexplorer.py block for a specific block.
9. Run python blockchain_explorer.py token to check the balance of a specific ERC-20 token at a wallet address, with automatic decimal and symbol resolution.
10. Export any query result in JSON or CSV format using --format json or --format csv and redirect to a file for downstream processing.
11. Enable verbose mode with --verbose to display API request URLs, response times, cache hit/miss status, and rate lim