Key points:

• BscScan is a blockchain explorer that allows users to easily track transactions, check wallet balances, and interact with smart contracts on the BNB Smart Chain (BSC).

• It also offers a number of features such as monitoring gas prices, tracking BEP-20 tokens and checking the number of unique addresses.

• These metrics can help users check network activity, detect congestion, and evaluate token performance, which can be very useful for investors, traders, and blockchain developers.

Introduction

We often say that public blockchains are inclusive, meaning that anyone with an address can interact with them. But did you know that blockchain development is also inclusive? Anyone with the right experience can deploy their dApp on the blockchain and no one will stop them.

This fact has caused a high rate of development in the field of decentralized finance (DeFi). BNB Smart Chain (BSC) is still a young blockchain, but is already seeing impressive growth. How impressive, you ask? Well, there is a lot of public on-chain data that allows traders and investors to easily check the activity of the network.

If you want to access this on-chain data, a blockchain explorer like BscScan is the easiest way to find what you need.

What is BscScan?

BscScan is a blockchain explorer developed by the same team as Etherscan. It offers an analytics platform for BNB Smart Chain, but also has many other useful features. This is a good source of information if you want to follow DeFi projects that are developed on BSC. 

You can also use BscScan to:

1. Searching for transactions and checking their progress.

2. Viewing the last blocks added to the blockchain.

3. Checks of wallet balances and any of their transactions.

4. Search, read and interact with smart contracts deployed on the blockchain.

5. Search for offers of tokens and other cryptocurrencies.

All this information is available without registration and absolutely free of charge. Blockchain Explorer simply displays all of this in a simple and easy to navigate form.

Why use BscScan?

BscScan was created by the trusted development team of EtherScan, the popular Ethereum blockchain explorer. In addition to its reputation, BscScan can help you navigate blockchain. With some basic knowledge of how to use it, you can quickly troubleshoot basic problems and queries.

For example, knowing how to find a smart contract in BscScan is a handy skill for anyone using a dApp. You can see if their smart contracts are verified and even interact with them directly via BscScan (which can be useful when the selected dApp's API is down). But on-chain information is not only the verification of smart contracts and basic transactions. 

For example, you can set up alerts to track large transactions. In some cases, transferring a large amount of BNB to an exchange may indicate that a sell-off is about to happen. You can monitor the wallets of DeFi protocol founders to see if they are moving their tokens. Let's dive into some of the more common tools and metrics you can find on BscScan.

How to find out the average price of gas on BNB Smart Chain?

First, point to [Resources], click [Chart & Stats], and then click [Average Gas Price Chart].

Now you will see a graph of the average price of gas, which is used to calculate the commission that users pay for transactions on BSC.

As we mentioned, BSC has relatively low commissions. In BSC, 1 gwei is 0.000000001 BNB. With an average gas price of around 6.5 gwei, sending 10 BNB should cost less than ten cents. In fact, it should no longer cost more than 30 cents to send ten or even a hundred times that amount.

From transaction history, we can see that people have been paying higher transaction fees than usual. Some users may have carried over their old habits from Ethereum or other blockchains. In fact, it is not necessary. BNB Smart Chain is still far from congested, so if the network condition remains stable, 6.5 gwei should be enough for a simple transaction.

How to find out the number of unique BNB Smart Chain addresses?

The number of unique addresses on BscScans is a great metric to use if you want to approximate the number of users on a network. You can find out the number of unique addresses by hovering over [Resources] and clicking [Chart & Stats]. Then click [Unique Addresses Chart].

If a blockchain has 100 unique addresses, does that mean it has 100 unique users? Absolutely not! Anyone can create multiple addresses. But thanks to the magic of cryptography, even if they did, we'd still have the addresses. And even then it would be quite difficult to determine whether these addresses belong to the same object.

So we know that anyone can create many addresses, and this figure is an overestimate of the number of users. However, the number of unique addresses can give us a rough idea of ​​the growth of the network.

How to find out the number of daily transactions on BNB Smart Chain?

This graph shows the total number of transactions on BNB Smart Chain for a given day. Again, it is available under [Charts & Stats].

While some smart contracts require more transactions to complete than others, this graph can give us an idea of ​​how active the network is and whether it might be congested. This is also a good sign of a healthy network.

Which BEP-20 tokens are the most popular?

The Token Tracker page allows you to track the largest BEP-20 tokens by market cap or daily trading volume. This will give you an idea of ​​which tokens have the highest aggregate value on the BSC blockchain as well as the highest trading volumes.

Information about the token should be noted here. Token/contract holders can update their token information on BscScan to provide you with more detailed information. If the BscScan team has not verified the token's contract address, it may not be trustworthy.

On this page you will see many wrapped tokens. These are tokenized versions of coins or tokens belonging to another blockchain. Binance-Peg ETH is one example. 

This means you can buy, sell and trade the ETH version on BSC without having to move your BSC funds to the Ethereum blockchain. That is, wrapped ETH on BSC is a tokenized version of the original ETH, which belongs to the Ethereum blockchain.

Is BscScan compatible with NFT?

As with any digital asset available on BSC, you can quickly find individual NFTs and their smart contracts. BEP-721 and BEP-1155 tokens are the most common BSC standards for NFTs, so let's look at a small example. Here is an NFT from PancakeSwap from the Pancake Squad collection:

If we copy the contract address (0x0a8901b0E25DEb55A87524f0cC164E9644020EBA) into the BscScan search bar, we can find the contract creator and token tracker.

If we click on the link from the Token Tracker, we can check the total supply, the number of holders and the total number of transfers. We can also use the tabs below to drill down into each of these metrics and other details such as inventory and contract source code.

How can I find BNB Smart Chain validators?

Simply put, validators are users who make sure that the BSC network continues to work. By staking BNB, they process transactions and confirm new blocks. In exchange for their services, they receive a transaction fee that comes from network activity.

BNB Smart Chain uses a consensus mechanism called Proof of StakedAuthority (PoSA). This consensus model can support short block generation times and lower fees. You can check the biggest validators on the BNB Smart Chain in the Validators Leaderboard in the [Validators] tab.

Who can become a validator? In general, anyone, but the requirements are relatively high. After all, the security of the network is at stake. If you want to learn more about how to become a validator on the BNB Smart Chain, check out the official BNB Chain documentation.

How to check smart contracts on BscScan?

BscScan users can enter the address of the contract to verify it and see if the compiled code matches the code running on that blockchain. This is easy to spot - you'll see a green checkmark next to the contract in the toolbar and the message [Contract Source Code Verified].

Giving users the ability to independently audit and verify code is a valuable feature as it contributes to the overall transparency of the BNB Smart Chain ecosystem. You can also directly interact with smart contracts by connecting a crypto wallet such as MetaMask.

Results

Whether you're a DeFi veteran or new to the BSC network, learning how to use BscScan will help you better understand how to handle the blockchain. However, keep in mind that markets are irrational, unpredictable and prone to periods of high volatility. Doing your own research is critical to trading success. This may include checking whether the token is certified by the BscScan team, whether the contract is open source and audited, and visiting the project's blog or social media accounts for a deeper understanding. Make sure you understand the risks involved in DeFi before you get started.

Related articles

• Introduction to BNB Smart Chain (BSC)

• What is BNB Chain?

• What is Etherscan and how to use it?

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