Okay—so you opened Solscan and felt a little lost. Been there. Seriously, the interface looks clean, but blockchains are messy under the hood. My instinct said: find the signature, then follow the bread crumbs. That usually works. Here’s a friendly, practical walkthrough for users and devs who want to move past surface-level scrolling and actually understand what’s happening on Solana.
Short version: Solscan gives you a readable window into signatures, parsed instructions, token flows, program logs, and chain-level metrics like TPS and slot times. But the devil’s in the details—transaction status nuances, inner instructions, compute budgets, and rent-exemption behavior all matter. I’ll show you how to read those things and why they matter.
First thing first: if you need a quick refresher or want to try an alternate explorer, check this resource here. It’s a decent starting point when you want another perspective or documentation links.
Finding and Interpreting a Transaction
Step 1: copy the transaction signature (a long base58 string). Step 2: paste into Solscan’s search. Boom—you get the transaction page. Medium detail first: look at the header to see slot, block time, and status (Success, Confirmed, or Failed). If you want deeper debugging, expand “Instructions” and “Logs.” The logs are where programs print messages and where runtime errors show up—think of them as console output from the on-chain runtime.
Check the top-level “Parsed Instructions” for human-friendly explanations: token transfers (SPL Token), system program ops (transfer, createAccount), and known program instruction decoders (Metaplex, Serum, etc.). When a transaction involves multiple programs, watch inner instructions. Those are nested calls (Cross-Program Invocations), and they often explain why a tx consumed a lot of compute or failed because an inner call returned an error.
One common gotcha: a tx might be “Confirmed” but not “Finalized.” That matters for certain workflows—if you need absolute certainty (e.g., trustless settlement), wait for Finalized. Another: “Failed” with logs will usually show “Program failed to complete” and an error code; decode that against the program’s error enum if available.
Common Failure Modes and How Solscan Helps
Here are quick diagnostic tips:
- Insufficient funds / rent-exempt: check account lamports. If a createAccount failed, rent exemption might be the reason.
- Wrong signer: a missing signature shows up when the instruction requires a signer but none was provided.
- Compute budget exceeded: you’ll see “Transaction exceeded max compute units” or similar in logs—this tells you to optimize or request more compute.
- Token metadata mismatch: NFT mint errors often occur because of metadata expectations; decoded instructions sometimes point to the offending metadata account.
Oh, and by the way—if you’re debugging a program, use the “Show Raw” or “Hex” view too. It’s clunky, but sometimes you need the raw account data (or the serialized instruction data) to figure out a mismatch.
Using Solscan’s Analytics
Solscan isn’t just for single tx lookups. The Analytics section surfaces chain-wide trends: slot time distribution, TPS, transaction volume, active accounts, and token market caps. For developers building tools, these charts are great for sanity checks—if your program spikes in activity, check the “Top Programs” and “Top Tokens” charts to see if you’re the cause.
Pro tip: export CSVs when you want to slice historical data offline. Solscan often lets you export holder lists or transaction histories for a specific token—handy for airdrop planning or forensic analysis.
Developer-Focused Tools and Workflows
Dev workflow, condensed: simulate → inspect → fix → resubmit. Use local or devnet simulators (like solana-test-validator) to reproduce issues. Then use Solscan to inspect the real blockchain behavior in prod. Look at account states before/after the tx—compare rent balance, ownership, and data size. For program logs, remember that high-level client libraries can mask raw behavior; the explorer shows the runtime truth.
Also: watch for CPI patterns and resource usage. If your app composes many CPIs, you might run into compute limits or need to rearchitect to fewer, larger instructions. On the other hand, packing many small ops into one tx can be more efficient, but harder to debug when something goes wrong.
FAQ
How do I view an account’s token balance history?
Open the account page in Solscan, then view “Token Balances” and the transaction history. If you need time-series data, export transactions and aggregate off-line. For tokens with many holders, use the “Holders” tab to see distribution—this is useful for airdrops and audits.
Why did my transaction show Confirmed but then fail later?
That can happen if your confirmation level was low (e.g., single node confirmation) and a fork reorged the block out. Always wait for Finalized for critical ops. Also check for downstream program errors in inner instructions that may surface after initial confirmation.
Can I rely on Solscan for program logs vs RPC getTransaction?
Yes—Solscan fetches and displays parsed RPC data (getTransaction/getConfirmedTransaction etc.). It’s convenient and often more readable. For automated tooling, call RPC directly and parse program logs programmatically, but for hand debugging, Solscan is faster.
