Routescan is the first and leading multichain block explorer, offering unmatched unification and aggregation.

We aim to index the entire EVM blockchain, including L2s and L3s. For business development, chains can approach us for a quote and service.

But there are also other types of commitments that we explore: like with the Superscan https://thesuperscan.io/, our unified Superchain explorer, that’s been funded throughout 2024 with a 65,000+ OP grant from the Optimism Foundation through what’s now called Retro Funding.

Lastly, we might provide a demo explorer to prove our value to potential clients. For instance, we approached Mantle L2 on January 10, 2023, before their L2 was on mainnet. Although interested in our product, they were also in discussions with Etherscan.

Bullish on Mantle's future as a BitDAO spinoff, we quickly made them a good offer. They were interested, but our product lacked L1 <> L2 bridge transaction tracking and custom DA solutions like MantleDA. But the testnet launch was far off.

In March 2023, we went back with another offer, including the work that we previously couldn’t do, because our product got more mature. They were in discussion with another provider (not Etherscan) to host the explorer, but they decided not to go through.

A few months pass by, and in July 2023 we met some from the Mantle team at EthCC that re-ignited the conversation, and we agreed on setting up a test explorer so that they could see what they would be paying for a few months later.

They liked it. And we also got to know that the ‘community explorer’ being worked on was mantlescan.org from AnyScan, a small team from India (I believe, after looking at their company info on the website) that’s now not operating anymore.


Everything was good! We launched the mainnet explorer and quickly built the support they requested for L1 <> L2 transactions, except for the MantleDA support, that we would have built after the contract signature.

We had the explorer ready 3 days before the mainnet launch, showcasing our speed and efficiency. The team requested improvements, and we happily complied, even without a signed contract, driven by trust and enthusiasm for the project.

We fixed everything, mostly within one hour.

Then they asked for some requirements and performance metrics, which we gave, and contract verification support around the first days on August. Then, on August 28, 2023, everything changed and we don’t know exactly what happened.

They wanted to continue developing their own explorer, available at explorer.mantle.xyz, and they completely stopped answering to us, then on September 19th we got word they were going with Etherscan.

But in the meantime, most developers were using mantlescan.info, our explorer, as default for their contract verification and debugging workflows!

We secured the #2 spot after explorer.mantle.xyz without advertising or targeting "mante explorer" and "mantle scan." Developers want Etherscan features but not necessarily Etherscan itself. Boba Network, Avalanche, and others chose us over the big player for a cost-effective, efficient, multichain solution.

They even played ‘dumb’ asking us why we would have a ‘red banner’ saying that the indexing is not complete, when we said to them multiple times that that version of the explorer was live as a demo, and that we would complete the explorer once the service contract was signed.

They were kind enough to provide us with a (very intermittently working) RPC, fair enough. But they said they were going with Etherscan because ‘devs and users couldn’t stop bugging us about it.’

This was January 11, 2024. And a couple months later they even said that we would have to run our own nodes!


They continued to give us updates like we were a serviced partner: upgrade your node, mind the changes to this and that, and so on. But we still weren’t paid.

We even tried asking the grant route, but they said that they won’t fund infra through grants.



Now, a year after keeping the explorer online, we tried a couple more times with new team members that had to decline the offer again.

We spent thousands of dollars to keep the indexing running, and we did that because we believed (and we still believe, honestly) that the fact that we were the first to build a good explorer got us an advantage.

Looking at Semrush, in fact, we can see how Etherscan’s leadership with their explorer is not absolute. 

Mantlescan.info isn't advertised as Mantle's explorer and isn't in their docs. Yet, in November 2024, we captured about 10% of unique users. We had even more market share before July, especially in Q2, approaching the official explorer's user numbers. Here's a snapshot of 2024's quarterly data highlighting our Q2 dominance.

So what happens now? Since Etherscan is in the market, we couldn’t sell any adv slots for our explorer because nobody is interested, so we have to shut down the explorer. But we won’t throw away the traffic and users, because we gained those.

So we’ll still continue to index Mantle, even though there won’t be a Mantle-specific explorer. When a user goes to mantlescan.info or any other sub-link, they will get the corresponding page on the multichain routescan.io platform.

Users and developers won't notice changes, as we're protesting Mantle's refusal to support a quality block explorer for a low cost. With Mantle's low TPS, we only needed $20,000-$40,000 yearly to operate. If TPS increases, we can't promise to maintain indexing without someone covering server costs.

So yes, we’re taking a stand because of course if a chain can pay Etherscan they do it, but they also need to at least pay for what they asked in the beginning. Mantle never paid anything, not even for the months-long demo.

Something needs to change. Explorers are perceived as a public good, but nobody wants to pay for it, except when it comes to Etherscan.

We’re trying to change that, but it’ll take a lot of time.

You can read the unrolled version of this thread here: https://typefully.com/ijaack94/9tmTY8z

Behind the Scenes of why we're shutting down mantlescan.info

BD takes YEARS.

One (now) customer of ours, Kroma, took me nearly 2 years to convert to Routescan.

A short story: 👇🏼

I met Derek, COO, in Paris, outside a zkSync event. I was expecting to get in, but my PoC wasn't answering. So I met him and since we were both expecting to eat at that event, we now had nothing to eat, and it was way past 10 PM!

We went to McDonald's for a burger, fries, and a chat about launching a competitor to Etherscan.

He was interested, but Wemix already managed their contracts and had agreements for their explorers, so our 'reduce costs by 90%' pitch didn't land.

I was sad, but I still tried to put them up for a second explorer, but nothing came through: they used blockscout as second choice, so they didn't need a third one.

But me and Derek, we bonded: he's my friend, truly. He's my korean friend. We met multiple times over the following 12 months. I even went visit their office during my visit to Seoul last March.

We chatted every time we could, during events and even on Telegram.

I saw a bit of myself in Derek, both for his role and his personal life.

I would chime in, every now and then, and ask if there was a chance to resume the 'explorer conversation', but I mostly got 'contract is not ended yet'.

And honestly, when they announced they got in the Superchain, we even offered to index the chain for free thanks to our offer related to Retro Funding, but there were issues and we had to run our own node, incurring us in high costs that we couldn't sustain for a free explorer.

Then, one day, a message came from Derek:

They ended the contract with Etherscan and were ready to get on with us.

We moved from informal agreement to contract in just 15 days—our fastest ever. Personal connection and alignment are key.

Many in crypto prioritise business over relationships, and that's extremely bad for the community as a whole.

The Long Road to Conversion

When I say Base is extracting value from Ethereum without boosting ETH, I'm not condemning L2s.

Here’s why 👇🏼

Actually, they're not. L2s are Ethereum's secret weapon for scaling, but imagining 10,000 L2s is over the top. You really only need about 20—and not all need to be ultra-high throughput.

MegaETH is launching as an L2, while Monad is not. Sei is an EVM-compatible Cosmos L1. Solana, on the other hand, has an entirely different VM.

Ethereum is not the panacea to solving the world computing. @VitalikButerin may be having a superhuman moment, because Ethereum cannot possibly be the only L1 out there.

It just doesn’t make sense.

Even if they solve the social layer issues, it’s still just ‘one community’. It’s just like saying that the U.S. should govern the whole world directly.

They tried, over the past 50 years, to superimpose their culture and influence. But eventually, China, Russia, Middle East powers and the BRICS also exerted THEIR influence.

You cannot have ONE L1. You must have many L1s for any kind of reason: compliance, security, technical vision.

And Ethereum is not going to have 10,000 L2s just like there won’t be 10,000 Cosmos, Avalanche or Polkadot L1s. It just doesn’t make sense.

And I’m saying it out of interest, because we make money when new chains launch and choose us as their explorer.

Do your own thing, but don’t try to scale to 1M TPS: you won’t have real TPS anyway.

As a counter-example, let’s imagine all major players in Web2 make their L2s on top of Ethereum L1. Among these:
- NASDAQ
- Blackrock
- Electronic Arts
- The U.S. government
Just as an example among different industries.

Each one can’t have their own token, because.. security! So each one, just like Base, gets traction and revenue in ETH and sells those. 

If just one Base L2 is affecting ETH's value—and the market has already priced this in due to visible large short positions on ETH—imagine the impact if there were 5 or 10. ETH would rapidly lose value, making it economically unviable for home stakers to continue staking.

Two possible outcomes are:

1) L2s might eventually become unprofitable in dollar terms because ETH's value is too low, while blob and execution expenses are too high.
2) L2s could form a cartel to stabilize ETH’s price, ensuring they can continue profiting from sequencing fees.

Either way, decentralization on L1 gets destroyed.

This a utopia for now, but not so much in the medium term (3-5 years). And since Ethereum roadmaps are this long, it makes sense to take notice.

Decentralized Networks and Scaling Solutions

But, but, but, I can show you something I've been teasing for a few months now.

New Staking pages are coming to @AvascanExplorer.

I can now share a sneak peek at the first of these pages: the Address Staking Details page.

A smol 🧵


In major explorers, the consensus layer (staking, network data) is completely or mostly absent. This is because there are websites dedicated to show staking or networking data across multiple chains. But the thing is, most of these platforms only provide total data points.

AFAIK, no one offers specific, detailed information about the single address'. Etherscan has beaconscan, but that is a different website and it's hard to track validator's behavior with onchain activity.

At Avascan, we strive to realize @el33th4xor 's vision of 'seeing everything happening on #Avalanche all at once'. This is because Avalanche is a blockchain holistic, agnostic platform and this is very much possible to do from the start.

That's why we could show basic global data about staking and some validator details right from the start. But what about SINGLE staking data? And how are those correlated with onchain activity across chains (in Avalanche case, subnets)?

Well, we will be able to provide an answer soon, with the Address Staking Details page. First, you'll be able to see how much rewards have been earned by a specific address via staking, including potential rewards, both from validations and delegations.

Then, you'll be able to see all the validations an address is connected with, both current and completed, with details about the avg recorded uptime and the yield obtained.

Samesies for the delegations: we found out that a lot of users like to diversify staking risk by starting multiple validators on different node operators and then even delegating other validators to be exposed to a different range of reward potentials.

Of course you'll be able to export all this data in a simple CSV so that tax season won't be a pain in the ass.

And this is just the start: we've got more Staking-related pages coming in the next 3 months, and this is coming to the @FlareNetworks Flarescan as well.

Wyt?

New Staking Pages: Sneak Peek!

A Detailed Status Update on the Snowtrace Transition

Most users can already see the new website at snowtrace.io, but some ISP providers are still not refreshing the new nameservers with the correct DNS configuration.

Here's an mid-flight analysis 👇🏼

Context: cloudflare.com is etherscan, awsdns is us.

US is almost done

Asia is done except for domestic connections from Turkey

If you still can't see snowtrace.io and you're getting a DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN error, it means your ISP provider has not updated with the new configuration.

If you really want to see the new explorer on snowtrace.io, you can VPN through Australia.

Alternatively, you can just use snowtrace.dev because it's actually the same thing.

In any case, the worst case is that the ISP provider updates within 24 hours from the actual change, so you'll be 100% be able to see it between 2:00 PM and 4:00 PM UTC today.

For any issue, any, you can reach out in our Discord server in the #avalanche channel: https://discord.gg/7qjtEr7c

Snowtrace Transition: Status Update

Liquidity Book Journal, Days 3 to 6

I'm back! And I'm so curious to see how much I've made and how my strategy turned out.

Let's dive right away ↓

BTC.b - USDC

My USDC liquidity got completely burned down as BTC went below my lower 29.8k bound earlier today. But this LP is still getting built, as users migrate from the V2 to this V2.1 pool, so fee earning is still not ideal.

I basically lost a few dollars.

I'm going to rebalance this completely:
- remove all liquidity
- swap 25% of BTC.b into USDC
- put in a Bid-Ask

I can rebalance even more times per day now, so I don't care if the liquidity is narrow. I'm betting on BTC's upside in the next 12-24 hours.

Next, AVAX-USDT.

My AVAX got burned all the way through their mini bull-run today and yesterday.

Some of you may ask: "but wouldn't it be better if you had just held on to your AVAX?"

No, it's not.

Because I didn't know whether AVAX would go up, and if it went down again, I'd erase my profits.

I took all profits at 19.60$ and earned about 83$ (1.4%) in fees in the last four days. This is exactly what I'm looking for: controlling volatility.

I'm applying the same strategy I used in the BTC.b - USDC above:
- removing all liquidity
- claim fees
- swap 25% of USDT into AVAX
- put in a Bid-Ask

This is what it looks like now. Hoping on a bit of downside tonight with this liquidity position.

Next, AVAX-USDC.

Same as AVAX-USDT, of course.


But here I made a little more money: about 95$, even if the liquidity amount was a bit smaller.
To hedge my AVAX-USDT position, I'm rebalancing in the exact opposite way, swapping 75% of USDC into AVAX.

This is what the liquidity looks like now.

Finally, JOE-USDC.

My JOEs got burned though all the way up the mini-bull to .62 and beyond.

And I didn't get any fees it seems, or very very low - 30$ in the last 2 week or so.

So I'm going to narrow it down a lot into a Bid-Ask, again after claiming fees (15$ that I didn't claim in the last week).

By narrowing the number of bins, I'm also reducing the fees that I'll need to pay to add it now remove it in the future.

This is what it looks like now.

Yes, I'm betting it retraces a bit in the next 12 hours.

Overall, I made just 0.19% in profits over the 4 days, very low.

I lost about 170$ on the BTC.b-USDC pool and compensated well enough in the others.

What I learned: I reached the goal of not losing money (yay) but I didn't set the bins wide enough to earn fees at any time.

Liquidity Book Journal Update: Days 3 to 6

Liquidity Book Journal, Day 2.

I'm going off from tomorrow to Monday, and I won't have access to my computer, so I need to think about a slightly different strategy.

I need to take into account that I can't change my strategy for about 4 days. Let's dive in. ↓

BTC.b - USDC

My BTC.b liquidity has dried up, so I need to rebalance strongly. I'm going to take a drastic approach:
- Withdraw all liquidity
- swap half of USDC into BTC.b
- put 50% BTC.b + 50% USDC in Bid-Ask curve


- put 50% USDC Spot in 15 bins at the left of the bid-ask
- put 50% BTC.b Spot in 15 bins at the right of the bid-ask

This is what it looks like now.

This should give me a lot of room to earn fees in the case of a huge volatility. (I got a 'bin of error' at the left)

I've been earning about 82$ in the last 24 hours, that's 0,83% daily margin.

AVAX-USDT

Burned through all my AVAX bins here as AVAX went up over 10% in the last 24 hours.

I'll do the same thing that I did my the BTC.b - USDC pool, and I'll also claim about 25$.


this is my new LP.

I'm making about 27$/day with this one, a 0,45% daily margin.

Next up, AVAX-USDC

Same issues of AVAX-USDT, so I'll apply a slightly different strategy, putting everything in spot for 30 bins around the current price.

This ensure I get adequate fees and can compensate for the more 'stable' strategy in AVAX-USDT.

I'm also claiming 38$.

This is the new LP curve after:
- removing all liquidity
- swapping half USDC for AVAX
- putting all in Spot as stated above (total of 31 bins)

Making 38$/day, a 0,68% daily margin.

Finally, JOE-USDC.

Since I don't have many coins here, I'll just leave it this way. I'm also not claiming fees 'cause that's only 2$ - still a 0,4%, but I'll eat all that fees in network fees if I do anything, so I'm just leaving it this way and hoping JOE retraces.

Overall, between token appreciation and fees, I made 0,60% vs. yesterday, or about 130$. This is a nice day stipend, if you ask me.

Let's see how much I make during the weekend.

Check again on Tuesday!

Liquidity Book Journal, April 13th 2023: Rebalancing for a weekend off

I'm more 'formally' reviewing my activity with the Liquidity Book from now on.

So, the portfolio I'm considering is denominated in USD, so the goal is to have more dollars. ↓

With the Liquidity Book, earning more dollars is relatively easy when the market is sideways because you can just concentrate liquidity in a few bins and earn from almost every swap made.

But right now the market is in a mini-bull run, with frequent 2-3% drops overnight.

So I need to rebalance more often that I did in the last 20 days or so. I may even need to rebalance daily.

And I need to rebalance now. Let's take a look at all the pools I have liquidity in.

First: BTC.b-USDC.

This is a V2.1 pool, so I don't need to claim fees, but I need to rebalance: I've got too many bins in the USDC part and just 3 in the BTC.b part.

This means that when BTC goes up, I only earn fees up to a certain point.

So I'm going to remove all liquidity, then put something back into spot 29.7k - 30.4k and the remaining in a Bid-Ask curve.

Since it's a V2.1 pool, all BTC.b earned in fees will be automatically put back in the correspondent bin, so they'll grow with no effort from my side.

This is what my LP looks like after the two operations.

I hope I do not need to rebalance as often with this strategy.

I was making 50$/day in fees from this - that's 0,5% daily. Hope to get to 0.9-1% with this new strategy and the high-volatility market.

Second: AVAX-USDT.

I'm doing good in this LP so I'll just claim fees (26.51$ in the last 14 hours or so) and put them back in a Bid-Ask curve, (see BTC.b - USDC pool above).

I'm making 55$/day with this - that's a 0,95% daily. Crazy.

Third: AVAX-USDC.

Like with AVAX-USDT, I'll claim fees and put them back in with the Bid-Ask curve.

I'm making 61$/day in fees with this LP - that's a 1.1% daily. Even crazier!

And in all cases, I'm not counting unrealized profit from token appreciation. That's on top.

Fourth and last: JOE-USDC.

This is the smallest pool. It's a larger experiment than the one I made with 100$ on my public address, but I think it makes sense because JOE can have higher volatility more often than AVAX, so you could make more fees.

I'm claiming fees and once again putting back in a Bid-Ask curve, but here it's even more relevant because I need to 'build' sufficient liquidity in a lot of bins (about 25) with very little money.

You could spot the differences.

I'm making 3.70$/day - that's 0,8%!

Here's a table to recap.

Counting all the fees that I already collected last night (that I accounted for in last day's calculation), I netted 0,59% overall.

The avg daily rate is now 0,47%. Over a year, that's 453%.

I can live with that.

So I made 0,59% while the global market cap went down 0,72%.

I outperformed the market by 1,31%.

Thanks LB.

Liquidity Book Journal, April 12th 2023: Rebalancing for Market Volatility

Reasons why if crypto is a Ponzi, then companies are Ponzis (so neither is).

Let’s start with the definition: “A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investing scam which generates returns for earlier investors with money taken from later investors.”

A thread ↓

1] Generating returns

- Crypto projects generate returns whether they are networks (staking rewards) or dapps (operation fees that are actual revenue)

- Companies generate returns when they pay a small % of what they earn from selling things and offering services

2] Generating returns for earlier investors

- If you buy a crypto coin before anyone notices it has potential value, you earn from its appreciation over time

- If you buy a stock before anyone notices it has potential value, you earn from its appreciation over time

3] Returning money to earlier investors using money taken from later investors

- From 2], an investor would like to realize profits by selling its crypto coins to other investors that want to buy it

- From 2], .... by selling its stocks to other investors that want to buy it

So both are Ponzis. Or maybe not, because neither are scam. Or they could be, selectively. Just like some stock can be a scam (Madoff, remember?), some coin can be a scam.

For more of this obvious content, follow me @ijaack94

Why Crypto Ain't a Ponzi If Neither Is A Stock

Here’s a story about crypto, but not only:

Progress works in a very simple way.

A new technology gets created that disrupts the market. It is very costly and clunky but it works, and everyone needs to pay for this because there’s no alternative.

Then, some time passes and new discoveries democratize access to that technology, either because the tech can be simplified, gets cheaper or both.

Most of times, the ones that invent the tech and disrupt the market at the beginning are NOT the ones that democratize it.

This is because the inventor has has profound bias: they think that what they did is the best, and they're not incentivized to give it more thought because they already make a good business out of it, why should they leave the old way to embark on a new journey?

This is not about companies. This is about people.

People are naturally inclined to get cozy as soon as they can, so they don't want to make more efforts if they can just stay idle and do nothing. That's just the way we are.

But the other ones, the people that democratize access to the technology, they're the ones that will be recognized and will have a lasting legacy.

Few remember that Motorola made the first phones, everyone knows Apple made the best ones.

We easily recognize those who bring a technology to the masses.

And at the same time, new technology gets built on top democratized technology.

The cycle is: New tech -> Democratized tech -> new tech -> etc.

It is not: New tech -> new tech -> new tech

What I'm saying is, crypto needs the 'Democratized tech' moment for a lot of market segments.

It needs it for the wallet concept, the liquidity concept, and the explorer concept.

I'm proud to work on the explorer concept, democratizing explorer tech with avascan.info