Show HN: Explore Ethereum by the Shape of a Transaction
A developer built a block explorer for Ethereum that lets users browse transactions by the shape of their call trees and address interaction graphs. The tool currently indexes about 1 billion transactions from blocks 20,800,000 to 25,399,999, with plans to automate ingestion of recent blocks and backfill data to The Merge.
Background
- A "block explorer" is a web tool (like Etherscan) that lets anyone look up individual transactions, addresses, and blocks on a blockchain — the public ledger of a cryptocurrency like Ethereum. This project is a new, alternative block explorer.
- Ethereum transactions often trigger chains of internal "sub-transactions" (e.g., a DEX trade calls a swap contract, which calls a token contract). This "call tree" is the shape of those nested calls. The explorer visualizes that structure graphically and lets you click through it.
- Most block explorers show raw data (hashes, amounts, gas fees); this one emphasizes the *visual topology* of how addresses interact — potentially useful for spotting patterns, suspicious activity, or understanding complex DeFi interactions.
- The data covers blocks 20.8M–25.4M (roughly late 2024 to mid-2025). "The Merge" (Sep 2022) is when Ethereum switched from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake; backfilling to that point would add ~10M more blocks of history.
- The creator is not trying to keep up with Ethereum's live block production in real time — this is an exploratory dataset, not a real-time monitoring tool.
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