Welcome to Day 2 of my series on Etherscan!!
Yesterday, we looked at what Etherscan is and why it matters. Today, let’s talk about the person behind it: Mtbitcoin
Before Etherscan became one of the most important tools in crypto, it was just one developer with an idea.
Matthew Tan is a Malaysian software developer who had already spent more than 15 years working in IT before he discovered Bitcoin in 2011. Like many early crypto users, he was fascinated by the idea of an open financial system. But he quickly noticed a problem: blockchain data was almost impossible for normal people to understand.
In 2013, he built an early project called Blockscan, a search tool for Counterparty, one of the first platforms built on Bitcoin. It was useful, but limited.
Then Ethereum launched in 2015.
Unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum allowed smart contracts and much more complex activity. Matthew immediately saw that Ethereum would need a better way to explore everything happening on-chain. So he took what he learned from Blockscan and started building Etherscan.
At the beginning, there was no company, no office, and almost no funding. He built the first version from his living room.
In his own words:
“The initial project was bootstrapped and I was doing the coding in my living room in the first year.”
For the first year, Etherscan was simply a side project powered by curiosity. Matthew was writing code, improving the explorer, and trying to make blockchain data readable for anyone not just developers.
In 2016, things started to change. Etherscan joined the Boost VC accelerator in the US and raised around $500,000 from investors including Boost VC and Digital Currency Group.
That money helped Etherscan grow, but what’s interesting is that they never raised huge venture rounds like most crypto startups. They stayed small, focused, and profitable.
By 2019, the company had grown into a 15-person team and was already making money through ads and paid API services. No hype. No token launch. No massive marketing campaign. Just a useful product that people genuinely needed.
Yesterday, we looked at what Etherscan is and why it matters. Today, let’s talk about the person behind it: Mtbitcoin
Before Etherscan became one of the most important tools in crypto, it was just one developer with an idea.
Matthew Tan is a Malaysian software developer who had already spent more than 15 years working in IT before he discovered Bitcoin in 2011. Like many early crypto users, he was fascinated by the idea of an open financial system. But he quickly noticed a problem: blockchain data was almost impossible for normal people to understand.
In 2013, he built an early project called Blockscan, a search tool for Counterparty, one of the first platforms built on Bitcoin. It was useful, but limited.
Then Ethereum launched in 2015.
Unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum allowed smart contracts and much more complex activity. Matthew immediately saw that Ethereum would need a better way to explore everything happening on-chain. So he took what he learned from Blockscan and started building Etherscan.
At the beginning, there was no company, no office, and almost no funding. He built the first version from his living room.
In his own words:
“The initial project was bootstrapped and I was doing the coding in my living room in the first year.”
For the first year, Etherscan was simply a side project powered by curiosity. Matthew was writing code, improving the explorer, and trying to make blockchain data readable for anyone not just developers.
In 2016, things started to change. Etherscan joined the Boost VC accelerator in the US and raised around $500,000 from investors including Boost VC and Digital Currency Group.
That money helped Etherscan grow, but what’s interesting is that they never raised huge venture rounds like most crypto startups. They stayed small, focused, and profitable.
By 2019, the company had grown into a 15-person team and was already making money through ads and paid API services. No hype. No token launch. No massive marketing campaign. Just a useful product that people genuinely needed.
