Solscan guide: tracking Solana transactions by signature and mint address

Solscan is a free search engine for the Solana blockchain: you enter a wallet address, a transaction signature or the name of a token and see in real time what has happened there. That lets you establish whether a transfer has arrived, what fee it cost, which tokens an address holds and whether a token is the original or a copy. You do not need an account, and Solscan itself cannot move any coins.

The technical term for such a tool is block explorer: a website that reads in all the data of a blockchain, organises it and makes it searchable. Solscan launched in 2021, said it had more than three million monthly users at the time of its acquisition and has belonged since January 2024 to Etherscan, the best-known explorer for Ethereum, as Blockworks reported at the time. If you hold SOL, USDC or a memecoin on Solana, you will need Solscan at the latest when a payment gets stuck or an exchange asks for proof of a deposit. Our comparison of crypto analytics platforms shows which tools are useful beyond the explorer itself.

What is Solscan? The block explorer for the Solana blockchain

Every transaction on Solana ends up in a block, and every block is public. A validator, meaning a computer that checks transactions and produces blocks, stores this data, but in a form that is barely readable for humans. Solscan translates it into pages with fields, amounts and timestamps. The explorer is therefore a reading device: it shows what has happened on the network, but it cannot reverse anything, block anything or recover lost coins.

For newcomers, the key point is the difference from a wallet. A wallet such as Phantom or Solflare manages your keys and signs transactions. Solscan, by contrast, knows no keys and requires no connection to your wallet. If a site posing as Solscan asks for your seed phrase or wants a wallet connection, it is not genuine. The explorer's only address is solscan.io. A Google search for the name also brings up pages on other domains calling themselves "Official Site"; you are better off not clicking on such results.

For day-to-day use, the website is enough. Anyone who needs data in larger quantities, for example for their own dashboard, can access the same blockchain data for a fee through the Solscan Pro API. According to the help pages, there is now also a command-line tool and an interface for AI agents. For private investors this is irrelevant.

The Solscan search bar: signature, address, token and domain

Everything starts with the search bar at the top of the home page. Solscan recognises on its own what you have entered:

• Transaction signature: a long string of around 88 characters that uniquely identifies each transaction. On Ethereum, the equivalent is called a transaction hash.
• Address: a string of 32 to 44 characters in Base58 format. This can be a wallet, a token account, a program or a token's mint address.
• Token name or ticker: Solscan suggests matching tokens, often including several with the same name. More on that later, because this is exactly where fakes lurk.
• Domain: Solscan resolves Solana Name Service names ending in .sol to the underlying address.
• Project or exchange: if you enter the name of a large exchange, the search shows addresses that Solscan has assigned to that name.

You will find the signature in your wallet, usually via the detail view of a transaction and a "View on Solscan" link. Exchanges often call it the TxID for withdrawals. If you copy it in full into the search bar, you land directly on the transaction page.

Reading a transaction on Solscan: signature, slot, status and fee

The transaction page is the most important view. At the top is an overview whose fields are described one by one in the Solscan documentation. The most important ones, in the order in which you check them:

• Result: Success or Failed. Only "Success" means that the transfer or swap was actually executed.
• Confirmation status: "Finalized" means that enough validators have confirmed the block and the transaction will no longer be rolled back. If it still says "Confirmed", it has almost certainly gone through but is not yet final.
• Block: the slot number. A slot is the time window in which a validator may produce a block; on Solana it lasts about 400 milliseconds.
• Timestamp: the time of processing. Solscan shows either the elapsed time or the date and time.
• Signer: the address that signed and paid for the transaction.
• Fee: the fee paid in SOL.

The fee consists of a base fee per signature and an optional priority fee. On September 28, 2026, a simple SOL transfer cost 5,000 lamports, or 0.000005 SOL, according to our guide at the time; a lamport is the smallest unit of a SOL, and one billion of them make one coin. Our guide to Phantom Wallet, Solscan and the cost of a Solana transfer explains in detail how the costs are made up and why a small amount of SOL is also locked up the first time you receive a token.

One point surprises many users: a failed transaction also costs the fee. The network processed it; only the intended result did not materialise. If the Result field says "Failed", your balance is unchanged apart from the fee, and you can start the process again.

Instructions and TX Map: what happens inside a Solana transaction

Below the overview comes the "Main Actions" section. It summarises what the transaction did, for example "Transfer 2 SOL to …" or "Swap 100 USDC for 0.6 SOL on …". For a quick look, that is enough. If you want to know in more detail what happened, open the instructions.

A Solana transaction consists of one or more instructions. Each instruction calls a program, meaning a smart contract, and names the accounts that are read or changed in the process. A simple swap on a decentralised exchange can thus consist of five or more instructions: setting a priority fee, creating a token account, swapping via an aggregator, returning surplus amounts. Solscan shows each instruction with the program called, the accounts involved and the data. For non-specialists, Solscan itself recommends leaving these details collapsed.

The TX Map is more helpful. The map draws the path of the values as a flow: which token went from which address, in what quantity, to which address. For swaps across several liquidity pools, this is often the only way to see at a glance where your money has travelled. With a free Solscan account, you can also add your own note to any transaction, such as "Purchase via exchange X", which helps later at tax time.

Wallet address on Solscan: SOL balance, token accounts and history

If you search for a wallet address, Solscan first shows the overview: the SOL balance with its current value and, below it, all SPL tokens that the address holds. SPL is Solana's token standard, comparable to ERC-20 on Ethereum. Below that are tabs for transactions, SOL movements and token transfers, each with signature, block, time, sender, recipient and amount.

One Solana quirk belongs here. Tokens do not sit directly on your wallet address but in a separate token account for each token, which belongs to your address. Solscan calls this account the "Associated Account", and your wallet address appears there as the "Authority" or "Owner". If someone sends you a token you have never held before, the wallet or the sending program creates this account automatically. That is why you sometimes see a "Create Associated Account" instruction in your history that you did not trigger yourself.

In practice, this means that if you want to check whether a USDC payment has arrived, you search for your wallet address and open the token transfers tab. You only need the token account address if an exchange explicitly asks for it. Our comparison of software wallets shows which wallets handle Solana well and how they display token accounts.

A Solscan account also lets you set up a watchlist: you store addresses, such as your own wallets, and get notified of movements. This does not replace your wallet's security features, but it makes unexpected outflows visible more quickly.

Token page on Solscan: mint address, supply and holder distribution

Every token on Solana has a mint address. This address is its unique ID: anyone can choose a name, ticker and logo freely, but not the mint address. On the token page, Solscan shows this address at the top, along with the price, market capitalisation, total supply, meaning the number of all units issued, and the number of holders.

Below are three tabs that are useful for your own due diligence:

• Transfers: the token's most recent movements with block, time and instruction. Sudden large sales show up here first.
• Holders: the largest holders with token account, owner address, share of supply and value. If 40 or 50 percent sits with a few addresses that belong to neither an exchange nor a liquidity pool, that is a warning sign of the risk of a sudden sell-off.
• Analysis: a chart of the number of holders over time and a pie chart showing how much the top 10, 20, 50 or 100 addresses hold. Alongside it, Solscan lists the trading venues where the token is traded, with pair and trading volume.

The holder list needs context. A large address may be an exchange wallet holding the coins of thousands of customers, or a pool on a decentralised exchange. Solscan marks many such addresses with a label. If the label is missing, the concentration is not automatically harmless.

Mint authority and freeze authority: the rights behind every SPL token

Two fields on the token page say more about a token's risk than any price chart. The mint authority is the address that is allowed to create new tokens. If it is set, the holder can increase the supply at any time and thereby dilute the value of all existing tokens. With many memecoins, this right is given up after launch; Solscan then no longer shows an account in this field.

The freeze authority can freeze token accounts. Holders of a frozen account can neither send nor sell their tokens. With regulated stablecoins such as USDC, this right is deliberately set because the issuer wants to be able to block stolen or sanctioned funds. With an unknown token without an issuer, there is usually no good reason for it. A token with an active freeze authority and an anonymous team is one of the familiar patterns behind traps in which purchased tokens can no longer be sold.

You can read both values in a few seconds. For a purchase that does not take place on a regulated exchange, this is the first check, even before looking at price or market value.

Fake tokens and address poisoning in your Solscan history

On Solana, creating a token with any name you like costs a few cents. Accordingly, there are many copies of well-known names. If you search for "USDC" on Solscan, several results appear. Circle's genuine USDC has the mint address EPjFWdd5AufqSSqeM2qN1xzybapC8G4wEGGkZwyTDt1v. Any other token with the ticker USDC has nothing to do with the stablecoin. The safe habit is therefore to copy the mint address from an official source of the project and compare it with Solscan, never relying on name and logo alone.

A second scam is called address poisoning. Fraudsters send you tiny amounts or worthless tokens from an address whose beginning and end resemble your own or a frequently used address. The aim: the next time you send funds, you copy the wrong address from your history. On Solscan, you can recognise such entries by unknown senders, tiny amounts and often tokens with enticing names. You should therefore copy recipient addresses from your address book or directly from the exchange, never from your transaction history.

Labels on Solscan: exchanges, projects and flagged hacker addresses

Many addresses carry a label next to them. Solscan assigns these according to a fixed order of priority: first a name from the Solana Name Service, then a project name, then an exchange name, then a flag as an exploiter or hacker, and only after that its own behavioural categories. These are based on an address's behaviour, such as the number of its NFT purchases or its swap volume, and range from beginner to frequent trader.

Labels are useful, but they are not a seal of approval. An exchange label shows that Solscan attributes the address to an exchange; it says nothing about whether the exchange is licensed in Germany. A hacker flag helps to trace outflows after a known attack. If a label is missing, it only means that Solscan does not know the address. With your own account, you can also add private labels that only you can see.

Home page and dashboards: TPS, DeFi and NFT activity on the Solana network

If you open Solscan without a specific search, you land on a home page with network-wide metrics that update in real time. At the very bottom, the blockchain explorer shows the TPS, meaning transactions per second, and the average ping time over various periods. Next to it is a figure called True TPS. It counts only actions that users have signed themselves and leaves out validators' voting transactions, which make up a large part of network activity. True TPS is therefore the more meaningful figure for gauging how heavily Solana is actually used.

Above that are two dashboards. The NFT dashboard shows the most popular collections of the past 30 days, and the DeFi dashboard shows trading volume and its distribution across the major decentralised exchanges and protocols. For traders and investors, this is a quick overview of where activity and capital are moving in the ecosystem; it is not a buy recommendation. In the Blockchain tab, Solscan also lists the latest blocks with slot, blockhash, number of transactions and the validator that produced the block, together with its SOL reward. If you want to delegate SOL to a validator by staking, you will also find a list of validators there as a starting point for comparison.

Programs on Solscan: smart contracts with an upgrade authority

On Solana, programs are what are called smart contracts on Ethereum. The program page on Solscan shows whether the program is executable, whether it may be changed later and which address holds this upgrade authority. The holder can replace an upgradeable program at any time. For large protocols this is standard and usually secured by multi-signature arrangements; for small projects it is a risk you should know about before depositing money.

Below that, Solscan lists the transactions that have called the program and, for programs built with the Anchor developer framework, the interface description. For investors, this section is mainly of interest if they have granted an approval to a decentralised application and want to know which program is behind it. For reading gas, logs and contract code on Ethereum, our Etherscan guide is the counterpart.

Solscan CSV export as evidence for your crypto taxes

For tax purposes in Germany, Solscan is a record, not a calculator. Gains from selling or swapping cryptocurrencies are taxable under Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act if less than a year passes between purchase and sale. Every swap on Solana counts as the sale of one token and the purchase of another and restarts the holding period. If you swap a lot on Solana, you quickly accumulate dozens of taxable events.

Solscan offers a CSV export for this. According to the help page, you open the page for your address, select "Export CSV" in the Transfers or token holdings tab, set the transaction type and period and confirm a CAPTCHA. If the download breaks off, a shorter period helps. According to the same help page, the export only contains data from July 7, 2021 onwards.

The file does not replace a tax calculation. The export shows movements, but no acquisition costs in euros and no order of consumption across several wallets. If your coins sit on several exchanges and wallets, the order in which you bought them applies; our article on the FIFO method across multiple exchanges and wallets explains how the German tax office sees this. It is more practical to import the address directly into a tax tool that supports Solana; the Solscan file then serves as a cross-check and as evidence if the tax office asks. Our comparison of crypto tax tools shows which programs reliably import Solana addresses.

Solscan, Solana Explorer and SolanaFM compared

Solscan is not the only explorer for Solana. The Solana Explorer at explorer.solana.com comes from the circle of the network's developers and presents the raw data more plainly, with fewer labels and no market data. It is useful as a second opinion when Solscan shows a transaction with a delay or a page fails to load. SolanaFM is another independent explorer with its own presentation of instructions.

All explorers read the same blockchain. If two explorers differ, this is due to delays in reading in the data or to the way it is presented, never to different data on the network. For investors, Solscan is usually the first choice because of its token pages, holder analysis and CSV export, with Solana Explorer second.

All of them share one limit: an explorer shows what has happened on the blockchain. What happens inside an exchange, such as a purchase on the trading venue or a transfer between customer accounts, cannot be seen on Solscan. Only a withdrawal to your own address appears there.

Solscan: the signature is the proof of every Solana payment

Whether a payment is stuck, a token looks suspicious or the tax office asks for evidence: with the signature, the address and the mint address you can answer most questions yourself. Three steps make you independent of customer support:

1. Buy through a vetted provider: if you are buying SOL or USDC, it is best to start with an exchange licensed in the EU and only then withdraw to your own address. Our comparison of crypto exchanges shows which providers are suitable.
2. Store with oversight: use a wallet that displays Solana tokens and their mint addresses clearly, and add your own addresses to the Solscan watchlist. You will find suitable wallets in the software wallet comparison.
3. Keep records for tax: export the CSV file for each address once a year and reconcile it with your tax tool. Suitable programs are listed in the comparison of tax tools.

(As of November 9, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)