And the 5 most important stats to follow to understand bitcoin
While many of our customers know us primarily for the Blockchain.com Wallet, our oldest product was (and is) a blockchain explorer. In fact, here’s what it looked like in 2011:
While it may seem like the majority of action takes place on the Wallet or the Exchange — we make up 1/3rd of all bitcoin transactions — millions of blockchain analysts, traders, users, and enthusiasts visit blockchain.com/explorer for their everyday needs.
To better serve these users, the team has been hard at work creating an easier, more intuitive, and more powerful experience. This started with a clean user interface that offered more opportunities for discovery and exploration.
The new explorer home page features the most important information about the crypto ecosystem all in one place, in real time and affords the opportunity to drill into that data in more detail.
The Blockchain.com Explorer also features 5 new charts: Hashrate Distribution Over Time, Average Fees per Transactions, and 3 On-Chain Market Signals.
There are many ways to discover within the Explorer. To help guide newcomers and seasoned vets alike, we’ve assembled a high-level tour of the 5 most important stats to look at while visiting the Blockchain.com Explorer.
Blockchain.com actually invented this term back in the day and we continue to report on it. At a basic level it demonstrates the amount of total computing power that is estimated to secure the bitcoin network. It’s one of the most important elements to bitcoin’s network security. The more hash rate, the greater the level of bitcoin network security and resilience against 51% attacks.
While daily numbers may periodically rise and drop as a result of the randomness of block discovery, our analysts have found that looking at a 7 day average of hash rate is a better representation of the underlying power.
The mempool is where all the valid transactions wait to be confirmed by the Bitcoin network. A high mempool size indicates more network traffic which will result in longer average confirmation time and higher priority fees. By knowing the state of the mempool, you can estimate — given the selected fee rates — how long it might take the network to confirm a transaction.
If you watch those charts long enough, you will notice that around 5am UTC, the mempool is on average 30% less busy than the daily average. In comparison, around 2pm UTC the mempool is 40% more busy. Keep in mind that because of some exchange activities, the bitcoin network is often more congested during the afternoon.
As previously discussed, the average fee per transaction is an easy indicator to understand how much the bitcoin network charges for confirming a transaction and is directly affected by the state of the mempool. This is a good summary indicator, but remember that each transaction pays network fees for its weight, which depends on the type of transaction, the UTXOs it spends (inputs) and the addresses it sends to (outputs).
The number of daily confirmed transactions highlights the value of the bitcoin network as a way to securely transfer funds without a third party. During times of peak mempool congestion, transactions with lower fees are likely to be confirmed after a few hours or even days in rare cases.
While this one speaks for itself, keeping an eye on the price chart also gives a sense of how the market thinks about the network and specific tokens on a daily basis.
In the coming months we hope to add more data and functionality to make the Blockchain.com Explorer not just useful to experts but a great way for anyone to learn about and explore the world of crypto.
Fuel your curiosity today: blockchain.com/explorer.
