An Ethereum address explorer answers questions you would never be able to ask a bank: what exactly is in this wallet, where did it come from, and who is allowed to spend it? Every balance and every transfer on Ethereum is public, so any wallet explorer can show you the full picture for any address, yours or a stranger’s, without a login. The trick is knowing which parts of that picture to trust and which parts are noise, or worse, bait.
This guide walks through the address page as you will find it on Etherscan, Blockscout, Ethplorer or our own live explorer. We start with the basics, move on to approvals and scams, and finish with two topics that confuse even experienced users: watch-only tracking across several accounts, and why an Ethereum xpub does not work like a Bitcoin one.
What kind of address is it? EOA, contract or EIP-7702 delegated EOA
An Ethereum address is 20 bytes written as 42 characters: 0x plus 40 hex digits. The mix of upper and lower case letters is a checksum (EIP-55) that lets wallets catch typos, so an address copied correctly will always carry the same pattern. The same address exists on every EVM chain, which is why your mainnet address also works on Arbitrum or Base; balances on those chains live in layer 2 explorers, not on the mainnet page.
There are two classic kinds of account. An externally owned account (EOA) is controlled by a private key. That is what MetaMask, Rabby or a hardware wallet gives you. A contract account has code instead of a key and only acts when called. Explorers make the difference visible: contracts get a “Contract” tab with source code, bytecode and Read/Write functions, and many carry a name tag. If the page shows “Contract Creator”, it is a contract. Our smart contract explorer guide goes into the code side.
Since the Pectra upgrade in May 2025 there is a third case. With EIP-7702, an EOA can sign an authorization that points its account at a piece of contract code. The address keeps its private key but now behaves like a smart wallet, able to batch calls or let someone else pay gas. On chain, the account’s code becomes a short delegation marker beginning with 0xef0100, followed by the address of the delegate contract. Blockscout and Etherscan label such accounts and link to the delegate. If you see a delegation on your own wallet that you did not knowingly set up, treat it as an emergency.
Checking an Ethereum wallet balance and token holdings
The top of every address page shows the ETH balance and its value in dollars, computed from a price feed. Below or beside it sits the token holdings list: every ERC-20 token for which the address has a non-zero balance, with an estimated total value. NFTs appear in their own tab or in the same list, depending on the explorer.
Treat the token list with healthy scepticism. Anybody can create a token and send it to any address, and scammers airdrop worthless tokens with names like a website URL, hoping you will visit it to “claim” something. Explorers try to hide these under a “spam” or “unverified” filter, but none catches everything. A token you never bought is not a gift; do not interact with it, and never approve it. To check whether a token is genuine, compare its contract address with the one published by the project, as our Ethereum token explorer guide explains. NFT collections deserve the same care, covered in the NFT explorer guide.
Dollar totals are estimates. Illiquid tokens can show absurd values because a price feed took one tiny trade at face value. If a random address appears to hold millions in a token you have never heard of, the price is wrong, not the wallet rich.
Check a wallet or contract
Paste an address or an ENS name. You will see the ETH balance, token count, contract status and recent activity.
Reading an address’s history
The history on an address page is split into tabs, and each one answers a different question. Transactions lists what the address itself sent, plus plain ETH it received from other wallets. Internal transactions holds ETH that arrived from contracts, such as proceeds of a swap or a withdrawal from a protocol. Token transfers lists ERC-20 movements in both directions, and NFT transfers have their own tab. If money seems to be missing, the answer is nearly always on a tab you have not opened yet.
A few details on this page pay off. The transaction count on an EOA equals its nonce, so you know how many transactions it has ever sent. Etherscan shows when the address was first and last active, and often who funded it first, which tells you a lot about a fresh wallet: an address funded minutes ago by a mixer or a fresh exchange withdrawal and then used for a large token launch is a different animal from one active since 2017. For bookkeeping, Etherscan and Blockscout let you export the history as CSV. To understand any single entry in detail, open it and follow our transaction explorer guide.
ENS names and labels
The Ethereum Name Service maps readable names to addresses. Search vitalik.eth and any explorer resolves it to 0xd8dA6BF26964aF9D7eEd9e03E53415D37aA96045. Resolution in the other direction, from address to name, only works if the owner has set a primary name, which is why many addresses show no ENS name at all. Keep in mind that ENS names can expire and be registered by someone else, and that lookalike names such as vita1ik.eth exist. The name is a convenience, the address is the truth.
Labels or name tags, such as Binance 14, Uniswap V3: Router or Fake_Phishing123, come from the explorer’s own research and user reports. They are the most useful shortcut on the page and still only hints. A missing label does not mean an address is safe, and labels differ between explorers. When a label matters, compare two sources.
Token approvals: find what can spend your tokens, then revoke it
When you trade on a decentralized exchange or list an NFT, you sign an approval that lets a contract move a certain token from your wallet. Many apps ask for an unlimited amount, so you do not have to approve again next time. That approval stays in force until you remove it. If the approved contract is later exploited, or if the “app” was a phishing site all along, the spender can take the tokens without asking you again. A large share of wallet drains start with exactly this.
Explorers can list every live approval for an address. Etherscan has a dedicated Token Approval Checker, and revoke.cash is a popular independent tool that works across many chains. Both show the token, the spender contract and the allowed amount. Looking is free and needs no connection. Revoking means sending a transaction that sets the allowance back to zero, so you connect your wallet and pay a small gas fee per revocation. Our gas tracker shows whether now is a cheap moment.
Spotting address poisoning and drained wallets
Address poisoning preys on the habit of copying an address from your own history. A scammer generates an address that shares the first and last few characters with one you use, then sends you a zero-value token transfer or a few cents of a fake token from it. Now the lookalike sits in your history, and next time you copy “that address from last week”, you may copy theirs. Etherscan hides zero-value token transfers by default and flags known spoofing addresses, and Etherscan has publicly warned users about waves of these campaigns, which get cheaper to run as fees fall. The defence is boring: use an address book, or compare the whole address, not just the ends.
A drained wallet has a recognisable pattern. Within a few minutes, every valuable token leaves in a row of outgoing transfers to the same unfamiliar address, often with ETH going last. Sometimes the drain starts with an approval to an unknown spender, a signature-based permit, or since 2025 an EIP-7702 delegation to a contract nobody recognises. Afterwards, any ETH sent to the address to pay for gas disappears within the same block, because a sweeper bot holding the stolen key is watching. If you see this on your own address, the key is compromised: do not send more ETH, move whatever is left using a fresh wallet on a clean device, and revoke approvals from the new setup where possible.
Watch-only tracking and Ethereum xpub support
You do not need to connect a wallet to keep an eye on it. Etherscan offers watchlists with email alerts for incoming and outgoing transfers (a free account is required), Blockscout has a similar watchlist, and several wallets such as Rabby can add an address in watch-only mode. For token portfolios across many addresses, Ethplorer’s portfolio views are handy, as our Ethplorer review shows.
That brings us to a question we get a lot: is there an Ethereum block explorer with xpub support? In Bitcoin, one extended public key (xpub) lets an explorer derive hundreds of receive and change addresses and add them up into one wallet balance, because Bitcoin spreads coins across many single-use outputs. Ethereum is account-based. Each account is one address that keeps its balance and is reused forever, so there are no change addresses to aggregate.
Your seed phrase still derives Ethereum addresses along a BIP-44 path, typically m/44'/60'/0'/0/n, where 60 is Ethereum’s coin type and n counts up for each new account; MetaMask and Trezor use this pattern, while Ledger Live increments a different level of the path. But the derivation happens inside the wallet. Trezor Suite, for example, derives each Ethereum account locally and asks Trezor’s Blockbook backend about that single address; for Ethereum, Blockbook works per address rather than per xpub. Mainstream Ethereum explorers, including Etherscan, Blockscout and Blockchair, do not accept an xpub for ETH. If you want a combined view, add each address to a watchlist or portfolio tracker. And be careful about pasting an xpub anywhere: it reveals every address it can derive, which is a privacy leak even though it cannot move funds.
Privacy: Ethereum addresses are pseudonymous, not anonymous
An address has no name attached, but it is far from anonymous. The moment it touches an exchange that verified your identity, that exchange can link it to you. An ENS name, a public NFT, a donation you tweeted, or simply sending from two of your addresses in one transaction all make links that analytics firms and curious strangers can follow. Once an address is tied to you, every past and future transaction is tied to you too.
Practical hygiene goes a long way. Use one address for public activity and another for savings. Do not publish the address that holds most of your funds. Be aware that looking up an address sends the query to the explorer, which sees your IP address like any website; our live tool does not log searches, and for full privacy you can run a local explorer, as described in the open-source explorer guide. If you are choosing an explorer for daily use, our ranking of Ethereum explorers and the Blockscout review compare how each handles addresses, labels and privacy. For the official account model, see the ethereum.org accounts documentation.