Use Chainlens Blockchain Explorer
Chainlens Blockchain Explorer supports public and private EVM networks. This page describes how to use the free version of Chainlens with its built-in support for privacy-enabled Besu networks created using the Developer Quickstart.
Chainlens provides an overview of the entire network, including block information, contract metadata, transaction searches, and more.
You must connect to one of the privacy nodes (for example, member1besu
), not the dedicated RPC, to
allow access for Besu privacy API methods.
In production networks, you must secure access
to RPC nodes.
Prerequisites
Docker and Docker Compose installed.
Start Chainlens
Clone the Chainlens GitHub repository:
git clone https://github.com/web3labs/chainlens-free
The repository contains a docker-compose
directory to allow Chainlens to start with a Developer
Quickstart test network.
From the docker-compose
directory, run the following command:
NODE_ENDPOINT=http://rpcnode:8545 docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml -f chainlens-extensions/docker-compose-quorum-dev-quickstart.yml up
This command does two things:
- Sets up the node endpoint
- Tells Docker to run by using the two Docker Compose files provided
The first docker-compose.yml
file in the command contains all the services required for Chainlens.
The second file named docker-compose-quorum-dev-quickstart
contains the network settings required to start
Chainlens on the same network as the Besu development node.
Next, open http://localhost/
on your browser.
You’ll see the new initialization page while it boots up.
This may take 5–10 minutes for the all services to start and the ingestion sync to complete.
View on Chainlens
After starting Chainlens, you can view information about your network.
Screenshots in this section are taken from the Chainlens Goerli network.
The Dashboard page provides an aggregated view of network activities.
The Network page provides an overview of the network status and connected peers.
This page is disabled by default, and is only visible if you set DISPLAY_NETWOR_TAB=enabled
using
the following command:
NODE_ENDPOINT=http://member1besu:8545 DISPLAY_NETWORK_TAB=enabled docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml -f chainlens-extensions/docker-compose-quorum-dev-quickstart.yml up
The Blocks page shows a real-time view of the finalized blocks.
You can view a given block details by selecting a block hash or number.
The Transactions page shows a paginated view of new and historical transactions.
If you select any transaction hash, you can get the transaction details.
The Contracts page shows all the smart contracts deployed on the network.
You can view a smart contract details by selecting the contract address.
The Events page shows all the events generated on the network.
Stop Chainlens
To stop all the services from running, run the following command:
docker-compose down