NBDN: BlockScout an open source block explorer

This month we'd like to welcome our special guest Andrew Cravenho, project lead of BlockScout!

BlockScout is an open source blockchain explorer which provides an easy-to-use interface for users to inspect blocks, transactions, tokens, contracts, and addresses of any EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) blockchain. BlockScout will support 6 networks when it’s launched including Ethereum Mainnet, Kovan Testnet, Ropsten Testnet, Ethereum Classic, POA Core, and POA Sokol.

Much of the Ethereum community uses a block explorer called Etherscan. While this explorer offers many great tools and user experiences, they’re closed source and centralized. Sidechains, forks, and independent networks don’t have access to these tools that Etherscan offers. This is the reason BlockScout has been created. All EVM chains now have access to many of these same tools.

Blockscout is an Elixir application built on the Phoenix web framework, PostgreSQL, and many other open source efforts. The choice of using Elixir was an easy decision with its scalability, concurrency, and fault-tolerance systems.

The development of BlockScout is ongoing but here is a list of current features:

- Open source development
- Realtime events
- Smart contract verification
- Smart contract querying
- Token support (ERC20 and ERC721)
- User customization

This presentation will demonstrate the capabilities, features, and tools that BlockScout offers to the Ethereum ecosystem. A demonstration will also be provided on how to deploy BlockScout on your own private network customizing your logo, color scheme, and RPC endpoints.

Finally, we will discuss how to get involved in the POA Network community, future developments, and other projects that might be of interest to developers interested in contributing to the POA Network initiative.

Notes and minutes for more details before the meetup here: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s107/sh/bf83ba70-f3e6-4087-98b9-8226605afde4/dca0aa3a2aeed311