Over the last two days, we covered what Etherscan is and the story of its founder, Mathew Than

Today, let’s look at how Etherscan grew from a simple Ethereum explorer into one of the most important pieces of infrastructure in crypto.

2015: The Beginning

In August 2015, Etherscan officially launched. At that point, Ethereum itself was still brand new.

A month later, Etherscan launched its API service. This allowed developers to build apps and tools using blockchain data directly from Etherscan. It was the first sign that this would become much bigger than just a website.

2016: Smart Contracts and Tokens

In April 2016, Etherscan introduced smart contract verification.

This was a huge step. For the first time, developers could prove that the code they published matched the code running on-chain. That made Ethereum much more transparent and safer.

A few months later, Etherscan added support for ERC-20 tokens. This mattered because ERC-20 later became the standard behind thousands of crypto tokens.

2017: The NFT Era Begins

By 2017, crypto was growing fast. Etherscan moved into its first real office and added support for ENS names, making long wallet addresses easier to read.

Then in December 2017, something interesting happened: Etherscan started displaying NFT images and metadata from CryptoKitties.

At the time, NFTs were still a strange idea. But Etherscan saw where things were heading before most people did.

2018: Making Blockchain Easier to Understand

In 2018, Etherscan added some of the features people now use every day:

• Verified signatures

• Gas Tracker

• Address labels

Gas Tracker helped users see how expensive transactions were before sending them. Address labels made it easier to recognize important wallets and exchanges instead of staring at random strings of letters and numbers.

2020: Beyond Ethereum

2020 was one of the biggest years in Etherscan’s history.

It launched Blockscan, a search engine for Web3. It also launched BeaconScan, which tracked Ethereum’s new proof-of-stake chain before the network fully upgraded.

This was also the year Etherscan introduced Explorer as a Service, allowing other blockchain projects to create their own explorers using Etherscan’s technology.

2021–2022: Massive Growth

By 2021, Etherscan had become one of the top 1,000 most visited websites in the world.

Then in 2022, it played an important role during The Merge, one of the biggest events in crypto history.

While Ethereum changed from proof of work to proof of stake, Etherscan kept working without interruption. That helped millions of users continue tracking the network in real time.

2024: The Multichain Era

In January 2024, Etherscan acquired Solscan, one of the leading explorers for the Solana ecosystem.

This was a major shift. Etherscan was no longer just about Ethereum. It was becoming a platform for many different blockchains.

Later that year, it launched API V2, which supports more than 50 blockchains with a single API key. It also expanded Blockscan to more than 30 chains.

What started as one developer coding in his living room had become a global platform powering the entire Web3 ecosystem.

Tomorrow (Day 4): We’ll look at the exact features that made Etherscan the 1 blockchain explorer, from Gas Tracker and contract verification to wallet labels, Blockscan, and why millions trust it every day.