Solscan, the most well-known block explorer for the Solana blockchain, has been acquired by Etherscan, the preeminent block explorer for Ethereum transactions.

“We are honored to announce the acquisition of Solscan by Etherscan, the world’s leading block explorer. A momentous step in the world of blockchain exploration that will be a stepping stone for greater contributions to the Solana ecosystem,” Solscan said in a Jan. 3 post on X.

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What’s the reasoning behind the acquisition? According to the Solscan team, it’s the need for growth and usability—particularly given the Solana boom in the last few months. “While we always try our best to bring innovative and optimized block explorer technology to our users, we are aware of the need to grow & provide additional values to the whole ecosystem,” they continued.

With an average of three million monthly users, Solscan, founded in 2021, provides many of the same functionalities as Ethereum users are familiar with on the Etherscan website, such as transaction records and NFT metadata. However, Solscan currently lacks some features in Etherscan, like contract verification—the ability to check the code of a smart contract.

“Does this mean we finally get verified contracts on Solana and stop depositing six figures into closed-source black boxes?” asked Runiverse team member Madotsuki in a post on X.

For a contract to be verified on Etherscan means that the code that operates that smart contract is published openly, allowing anyone understanding the code to review it and ensure that it is secure, efficient, bug-free, and non-malicious. Currently, Solscan does not offer this functionality, meaning it’s difficult for community members to audit the code of new and popular projects.

There have also been ongoing complaints that the Solscan block explorer is hard to use. “The reason there are no mixers like Tornado Cash on Solana is because literally no one can read the block explorers anyway,” one developer wrote on Dec. 23, 2023.

In their announcement blog post, Etherscan, founded in 2015, hinted that more features are coming to both explorers but didn’t specify them. “We will continue executing on our vision of providing credibly neutral and equitable access to blockchain data, integration of additional useful features across explorers, enhanced support, and a more seamless user experience,” they wrote.

Solscan spelled out more of what its users can expect in its Jan. 3 announcement post on Substack. “Users can anticipate the integration of additional useful features across both Etherscan and Solscan, enhancing the exploration and analysis capabilities of both platforms,” they wrote.

Source: nftnow.com