Ava Labs plans to retire its Etherscan based block explorer by Nov. 30, and replace it with Routescan.
Before the date of deactivation, users will need to backup all information that they entered on the Block Explorer, such as addresses, private names tags, and transaction notes.
Etherscan states on its website that many factors can lead to a decision not to continue using block-explorers, such as the end of or failure to renew a service contract or the lack of team bandwidth.
Luigi D’Onorio told Blockworks, head of DeFi, developer relations and Ava Labs that Etherscan will no longer be used, and will instead be replaced by the new Avascan launch.
“Avascan has been a loyal, native team to the Avalanche ecosystem and provides support for Subnets, X-Chain and P-Chain as well as the C-Chain. The Etherscan deployment simply covered the C-Chain. As Avalanche continues to scale with Subnets, it is important that infrastructure partners cover this as well,” D’Onorio said.
Austin Blackerby of Flipside Crypto’s analytics department noted that it would cost a great deal for vendors outside the company to pull data from subnets. Ava Labs could save money by bringing these resources into-house.
“By bringing this in-house, they can take advantage of internal resources as well as create a seamless experience across the different subnets,” Blackerby said
Trevor Wenokur a senior engineer in data analytics at Flipside crypto, says there are some drawbacks. Wenokur said that, in the near term, users as well as the team developing the new explorer will lose access to shared knowledge and tools across EVM compatible chains.
“Oftentimes, EVM compatible chains share the same (or similar enough) processes and upgrades that things like technical solutions to decoding or new approaches for data type changes, new values etc., can be efficiently solved in one place, then applied everywhere all at once,” Wenokur said.
What is the business model for block explorers?
Carlos Mercado is a data scientist with Flipside Crypto. He told Blockworks, that foundations pay block explorers for their service.
“For instance, the Etherscan team runs cloned user interfaces for blockchains including Fantom, Polygon, Optimism, Arbitrum, etc,” Mercado said.
The data is also available via API for enterprise users. This gives them a competitive advantage.
“General purpose block explorers can remain at a competitive advantage by integrating off-chain data like contract code or ABIs to decode transactions,” Mercado said, “providing better, faster, cheaper enterprise access to historical data on user interactions with contracts.”
D’Onorio explains that the secret to staying competitive in the block-exploring market is having a wide range of diverse, well-funded team working on the project.
“Deciding who to work with is really a function of who has the long-term alignment in terms of incentives and focus on your ecosystem and a technically capable team,” D’Onorio said.
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