We didn't set out to build a block explorer. MiniBlocks started as an analytics platform — real-time dashboards for MegaETH, a chain that produces miniblocks every 10 milliseconds. We had TPS charts, network statistics, DApp rankings. High-level analytics was covered.
Then we kept running into the same problem: we couldn't see what was actually happening.
The Gap We Kept Hitting
Dashboards show aggregates. Average TPS over the last minute. Total gas consumed per hour. A DApp's transaction count for the day. Useful for big-picture trends, but useless for answering the kind of questions that come up when you're actually watching a live chain:
- A DApp suddenly shows 400% more gas than yesterday — was it one burst or sustained? Which miniblocks?
- A transaction failed — what else ran in the same miniblock? Was the block congested?
- TPS spikes to 3x normal at 14:23 UTC — what contracts were responsible, and for how long?
- An address keeps appearing in failed transactions — is it always the same contract, or different ones?
These aren't abstract questions. They're the ones we asked ourselves while building and debugging the analytics platform. And every time, the answer required digging through raw data or switching to a general-purpose explorer that showed MegaETH blocks the same way it shows Ethereum blocks — as flat lists of transactions inside numbered blocks, with no concept of miniblocks at all.
MegaETH doesn't work like Ethereum. A single block can contain around a hundred miniblocks, each produced ~10ms apart. That internal structure — which miniblock a transaction landed in, how many transactions were in that miniblock, the sub-second timing — is invisible on traditional explorers. They show the block, they show the transactions. The miniblocks in between are gone.
The core realization: We already had the miniblock-level data flowing through our pipeline at 100 events per second. We already stored which miniblock each transaction belonged to. We just had no way to look at it.
Design Philosophy: Make Fast Data Consumable
A block explorer for a chain that produces 100 miniblocks per second can't work the same way as one for a chain that produces a block every 12 seconds. If you tried to show every miniblock arriving in real time as a table row, you'd get a blur of scrolling text that no human can follow. The raw feed is technically accurate and practically useless.
Our approach is animation as primary medium. Instead of trying to make people read faster, we encode information into motion, color, and spatial patterns that the eye can absorb without deliberate focus.
The Miniblock River
The signature visual element across our explorer is what we call the "river" — miniblocks rendered as tiny colored squares flowing from left to right inside each block row:
- Gray — empty miniblock (0 transactions)
- Green — light activity (1 transaction)
- Gold — medium (2-3 transactions)
- Pink — heavy (4-9 transactions)
- Hot pink — burst (10+ transactions)
As miniblocks arrive, new squares appear. When you look at the blocks table, you don't read numbers — you see activity patterns. A block with a concentrated burst of pink squares tells you something different than one with evenly distributed green. A mostly gray block with a single gold square in the middle is a different story than solid green from edge to edge.
This visualization appears in three places: the main explorer (per-row background), block detail pages (full-width interactive river), and transaction detail pages (multi-block context showing where your transaction sits among its neighbors).
The Building Block
The top row of the blocks table is always the currently building block. It has a pulsing green left border. As miniblocks arrive — 100 per second — the transaction count, gas, and timestamp update in place. When a new block boundary is detected, the building row freezes, existing rows slide down, and a new building row appears.
This is the live chain. Not a page that refreshes every few seconds, but a table where you can watch a block being assembled in real time.
Live Activity Rankings
Next to the blocks table, a live activity panel shows the top contracts by call count in a rolling 30-second window. Rankings reshuffle in real time with smooth positional animations — when a contract moves from rank 5 to rank 2, it physically slides up while rank 3 and 4 slide down. Trend arrows show which direction each contract is moving.
This is the kind of information that would take a developer minutes to construct from raw data: "which contracts are most active right now?" On our explorer, it's always visible and always current.
Millisecond Precision Where It Matters
Every transaction page on our explorer shows two timestamps: the block time and the miniblock time. The miniblock time has sub-second precision — it tells you not just which block a transaction was in, but roughly when within that block it was executed.
On Ethereum, the difference between two transactions in the same block is unknowable from on-chain data (ordering is the miner's choice, timestamps are coarse). On MegaETH, the miniblock index gives you that ordering and timing with ~10ms resolution. Our explorer is the only tool that surfaces this.
The block detail page groups transactions by miniblock — not as a flat list, but as collapsible groups: "Miniblock #47 — 3 transactions", "Miniblock #48 — 1 transaction". You can see exactly how the block was assembled over time. Click any miniblock in the river visualization and the page scrolls to that group.
What You Can Do
The explorer has six interconnected page types. Here's what each one shows and when it's useful.
Smart Search
One search bar handles everything. Type a number and it finds the block. Paste a transaction hash and it goes to the transaction. Enter an address and it opens the contract page. Start typing a name and it autocompletes against our DApp catalog and registered contracts. Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+K from anywhere on the site.
Integration with the DApp Catalog
The explorer isn't isolated. When a transaction's target contract belongs to a registered DApp, the transaction page shows the DApp's name and logo with a link to its analytics page. The explorer's live activity panel links to contract analytics pages, which link back to the DApp if applicable.
This means navigating from "what's happening right now" (explorer) to "who's behind this contract" (DApp catalog) to "how has this contract performed over time" (contract analytics) is seamless — each transition is a single click.
What We Don't Cover
We should be direct about this. Our explorer is not a replacement for Etherscan or Blockscout. Those are comprehensive block explorers with years of development behind them. We don't provide:
- Internal transactions — no call trace or execution tree
- Contract source code — no verified source viewer or ABI
- Token portfolios — no ERC-20/721 balance tracking across wallets
- Full event logs — no indexed log search
- State inspection — no storage slot viewer
- Deep pagination — we show the last 50 transactions for an address, not the full history
- Data export — no CSV downloads
We link to Etherscan and Blockscout on every block, transaction, and address page. If you need any of the above, those links are one click away. We don't pretend to replace them.
What we offer instead: miniblock-level resolution, real-time streaming, and visualization-first presentation that makes the 10ms structure of MegaETH visible. These are the things existing explorers can't provide, because they were designed for chains where "block" is the finest granularity that matters.
Enough for Most Cases
In practice, we've found the explorer covers most day-to-day use cases without needing to leave: checking if a transaction went through, seeing what a contract has been doing, investigating a gas spike, browsing recent block activity, looking up an address's stats. For DApp developers on MegaETH, the miniblock grouping and sub-second timestamps are often more useful than the features only Etherscan has.
The 80/20 rule applies. We handle the 80% of lookups that people actually do, and we handle them with more depth and better real-time capabilities than any general-purpose explorer. For the other 20%, we link out.
Try It
The explorer is live at miniblocks.io/explorer. A few things to try:
- Open the explorer and watch the building block assemble in real time
- Click any block to see its miniblock river — hover over individual miniblocks to see their contents
- Look up a transaction and find it in the river view — it pulses among its neighbors
- Search for any DApp name to jump straight to its analytics
- Use the time-travel feature to revisit any moment on the chain
- Check an address page for its 30-day activity heatmap
If you need internal transactions, contract source code, or token balances, use the Etherscan/Blockscout links on any page. If you want to see how the chain actually works at the miniblock level — that's what we built this for.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a miniblock on MegaETH?
A miniblock is a sub-unit of execution inside a MegaETH block. MegaETH produces one miniblock roughly every 10 milliseconds, so a single block (finalized roughly every second) contains around a hundred of them. Each miniblock has its own transactions, gas usage, and timestamp. This is a finer granularity than any other EVM chain — and most block explorers don't expose it.
What is the block time on MegaETH?
MegaETH has two levels of timing. Miniblocks are produced every ~10 milliseconds, giving sub-second transaction ordering. Full blocks are finalized roughly every 1 second and contain all the miniblocks produced during that interval — around a hundred.
What does the MiniBlocks explorer show that other explorers don't?
MiniBlocks surfaces the miniblock structure inside each block — which miniblock a transaction landed in, sub-second timestamps, and a visual "river" showing activity patterns at 100 miniblocks per second. It also provides live contract activity rankings, time-travel to any past moment, 30-day address analytics, and per-contract heatmaps. General-purpose explorers flatten this into standard block/transaction lists.
Does the MiniBlocks explorer replace Etherscan or Blockscout?
No. It covers different ground. MiniBlocks focuses on real-time visualization, miniblock-level detail, and activity analytics. It does not provide internal transactions, verified source code, token portfolios, full event log search, or complete transaction history. Every page links directly to Etherscan and Blockscout for those use cases.