Humanizing Solana with Solscan
Together with Solscan we are hoping to make Solana more readable and understandable. Explorers are the key to staying up to date with whatever happens on-chain, without them, we’d be pretty stuck. However, even though the information is readily available it isn’t always understandable - in between all the transaction IDs, hashes, compute budgets and wallet addresses what is actually happening?
It’s exhausting and even OG crypto users can find this daunting. Our brains aren’t geared to remember and reuse a string of letters and numbers, these are made for computers.
A simple approach to make dApps more “human” is labeling things. Naming is a convention we are all used to. This is exactly what Solscan and the Solana Name Service set out to achieve. With .sol domain names we’re breaking barriers of adoption and easing your blockchain experience from the start.
Let’s get to what we have done!
Transactions with names
The most logical starting point was transaction IDs. Probabilistically, one of the most shared links to see what happened on-chain. Names are memorable and subsequently make your browsing process efficient. You can come back and continue your search without having to log addresses and get confused in the process.
Accounts & peers are labeled
On-chain diagnostics are now much simpler. Here in accounts, you can track all previous transactions with domain names. When you send funds or transfer an NFT to friend.sol using your favorite wallet, it should reflect as such on your account. This integration means don’t have to go knee-deep into an address search to see what you or others got up to.
Subdomains have not been forgotten
Subdomains are one of the cool features of having a domain name. You can create an unlimited number of these and share them with peers or allocate them for specific tasks. 1.friend.sol, 2.friend.sol and 3.friend.sol can become a brand spread across various addresses. Whether it be a team or an individual out for on-chain clout, the possibilities are endless.
Subdomains were notoriously difficult to discover since explorers hadn’t resolved these. Fret not, Solscan has officially solved this problem! Moving forward all domains and their subs will be displayed accordingly.
Auto-suggest & registrations
We’ve opted to enhance the domain search process as well. Besides displaying the domain and its address, Solscan’s UI will suggest alternative domains related to your search. This can be a good check for common misspellings or a way to discover domains you may like.\
Additionally, if you happen to land on a domain that’s not yet registered you will be notified. To make this even better, you can now register that domain directly from Solscan.
Closing note
It’s an honor to be recognized by an established project like Solscan. This in-depth integration shows the true value of having a domain name for the web3 world. This a small step to excel the Solana experience for all.
Solscan, the preferred explorer for .sol domain names.
