Explore blockchain data
ChainGate provides explorers — a set of blockchain query methods that work without a wallet. Explorers let you query balances, transactions, blocks, fees, and more for any address on any supported network.
Use them when you need to:
- Query balances and UTXOs for arbitrary addresses
- Broadcast raw transactions
- Retrieve transaction and block data
- Estimate gas and fees
- Interact with smart contracts (read-only)
- Get market data and network status
tip
Explorers are ideal for building block explorers, dashboards, monitoring tools, or any application that reads blockchain data without needing a wallet.
Initialization
Create a ChainGate instance and call .explore() with a network:
import { ChainGate } from 'chaingate'
const cg = new ChainGate({ apiKey: 'your-api-key' })
// UTXO explorer (Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Testnet)
const btcExplorer = cg.explore(cg.networks.bitcoin)
// EVM explorer (Ethereum)
const ethExplorer = cg.explore(cg.networks.ethereum)
Each network type returns its own explorer with methods tailored to that chain's capabilities.
Key points
- No wallet needed: Explorers query blockchain data for any address.
- Unified API: Consistent method naming across UTXO and EVM chains.
- Type-safe: TypeScript returns the correct explorer type based on the network.
- Custom EVM support: Query any EVM chain via
cg.networks.evmRpc(). - Safe math:
Amounthandles decimal precision correctly across all blockchains.