In line with the idea of constant development and steady growth, the core æternity blockchain development team is proud to let the community know of the fact that the Explorer is getting an update!

Indeed, this year has been one of strong development on many fronts, and the Explorer — the very thing allowing you to track and monitor all of the goings-on behind the screens of the ætertnity blockchain — has not been forgotten.

Analyzing the status quo of the explorer, the development team took into account all of the existing versions including the æternity explorer, AEKnow, and ænalytics.org while also taking into account other blockchains and their best practices. This way, the development team managed to map out the lay of the land both within the æternity æcosystem, and outside of it, for thorough inspiration both design and functionality-wise.

After deciding on a clear visual identity direction, the crux of the work continued. Broadly, the focus was primarily placed on improving the overall user experience by adding aspects such as blockchain visualization (more on this in a bit), state channel transactions page, last active state channels overview, or the option to employ data sorting on every page.

The main benefit of all of this is — clarity. Users can now gain valuable insights via data charts and be on top of everything, including oracles, tokens, state channels, and the like. However, the main attraction of the new and improved explorer has to be — blockchain visualization (a proper leap forward, ever since Bitcoin first saw the light of day).

Visualizing how the æternity blockchain works has been done by splitting all of the requisite elements into three main categories: keyblock, microblocks, and transactions. This way, changes can be tracked in real-time and users can stay on top of things such as: who is leading the block, how many microblocks are in it, and how many transactions each particular microblok has.

Here, for example, it is easily visible how the current keyblock changes and how many microblocks it contains:

Also, the main page of the dashboard was reworked in order to fully optimize it and make the information on it more easily digestible — but more on that later, as we bring you further updates. For now, know that more changes are coming and are about to become more evident!

Make sure to follow all æternity channels to stay on top of things and take full advantage of all project improvements!