What Is Solscan? How to Read a Solana Transaction Step by Step

This guide shows you how to read any Solana transaction on Solscan, the Solana block explorer, in about five minutes using only a browser. You need one thing to start: a transaction signature, or a wallet, token or account address to look up. No account, no wallet connection and no payment are required.

We focus on Solscan, but we also compare it with the official Solana Explorer and SolanaFM, and we show how to check a failed transaction and how to check a token’s mint authority before you trust it. If you are new to the chain itself, start with our guide to Solana.

What is Solscan?

Solscan is a read-only block explorer for the Solana blockchain. It indexes raw on-chain data and turns it into readable pages for transactions, accounts, tokens, NFTs, blocks and programs, so you can see what a transaction actually did without running a node. You look things up by signature, wallet address, token mint or program ID. Solscan has been run by the Etherscan team, which also operates Ethereum’s Etherscan explorer, since January 2024.

Etherscan announced that Solscan, founded in 2021 and serving more than three million monthly users at the time, had joined it on 3 January 2024, bringing over address, token and transaction information plus APIs, dashboards and NFT metadata. Today Solscan’s own documentation lists search across accounts, transactions, tokens, NFTs, blocks and programs, token research covering holders, supply, authorities and liquidity, DeFi and NFT dashboards, watchlists and alerts, CSV exports, and a paid developer API (the Solscan Pro API) with a command-line tool.

One point matters up front: Solscan only reads Solana. If your wallet is MetaMask, covered in our MetaMask guide, you are usually on Ethereum or an EVM chain, where the equivalent reader is Etherscan. For anything on Solana, Solscan, the official Solana Explorer and SolanaFM are the tools to use. See our coin directory for more on how these chains differ.

Is Solscan free, and do I need to connect a wallet?

Basic lookups on Solscan are free, and you never need an account, a connected wallet or a seed phrase just to read a transaction, address or token. It is read-only: it cannot move, reverse or recover funds, and no explorer ever needs your seed phrase. Paid plans exist only for high-volume developer API access.

Because it is read-only and non-custodial, Solscan never holds your assets and cannot sign anything on your behalf. That also means it cannot undo a mistake: if you send funds to the wrong address, the explorer can show you the transaction but cannot claw it back. Treat any site or message that asks for your seed phrase as a phishing attempt, even if it looks like Solscan. Read how to store a seed phrase for the rules that keep a wallet safe.

How do I read a Solana transaction step by step?

Open solscan.io and paste a transaction signature into the search bar to open the transaction detail page, then read the status, fee and balance changes from the top down. If you are checking a transfer or purchase you just made, copy the signature from your wallet’s recent activity. The whole check takes under a minute and needs no account.

1. Get the signature. In your wallet, find the transaction you want to check and copy its signature (a long string of letters and numbers, around 87 to 88 characters in base58). In a dApp, the confirmation screen usually shows a link to the transaction.
2. Open the official site. Go to solscan.io and check the address bar. Paste the signature into the search box and press Enter. Bookmark the real domain and avoid links from chat messages or email, which are how fake explorer clones spread.
3. Check the network. Confirm the cluster shown matches where the transaction happened. Mainnet-beta is the live network with real SOL; devnet and testnet use tokens that are not real and have no value.
4. Read the overview. The top of the page shows the status (Success or a failure message), the signature, the timestamp and the block the transaction landed in.
5. Look at the fee. Note the fee in SOL (or lamports) and the signer who paid it. Remember that a failed transaction still pays its fee.
6. Read the balance changes. The SOL balance change and token balance change sections list which addresses sent and received what, which is the fastest way to confirm a payment arrived.
7. Open the instructions. Expand the instructions to see which programs were called, such as a token transfer, a swap on a DEX, or an NFT mint. This tells you what the transaction was actually doing.
8. If it failed, read the error. Scroll to the error message and program logs to find the reason, which is covered in the failed-transaction section below.

What does each field in a Solana transaction mean?

A Solana transaction is an atomic bundle of one or more instructions: either every instruction succeeds or the whole transaction reverts, and the fee is paid either way. On the detail page the fields you will see most often are the signature, block number, status, fee, compute units and token transfers, each explained below with the underlying Solana numbers.

• Signature: a unique 64-byte Ed25519 signature that identifies the transaction. It is the key you paste into the search bar, and it also authorises the change from the signer.
• Block number: the position where the transaction landed, assigned during the period in which a leader validator produces a block. Solana cut its target block time from 400 milliseconds to 200 milliseconds in four steps during 2026, finishing on 9 October 2026, according to CoinDesk.
• Status: Success or an error. Because Solana is atomic, a failed instruction rolls back the whole transaction, but the fee is not refunded.
• Fee: a flat base fee of 5,000 lamports per signature (0.000005 SOL), split 50% burned and 50% to the validator, plus any priority fee you or the app added.
• Compute units: a measure of the compute budget a transaction is allowed. The default is 200,000 per instruction, and the maximum is 1,400,000 per transaction.
• Token transfers: the SPL token balance changes, showing which token accounts sent or received which token and how much.

Because the base fee is flat per signature, the size of the transaction does not change it: sending a fraction of a SOL costs the same base fee as an NFT mint. Priority fees are extra and optional. As an illustrative example, a compute unit price of 50,000 micro-lamports against a 200,000 compute unit budget adds ceil(50,000 x 200,000 / 1,000,000) = 10,000 lamports (0.00001 SOL), for a total of about 0.000015 SOL including the base fee. We do not convert this to dollars here because the price of SOL moves; the point is that fees are flat and are a tiny fraction of one SOL.

How do I check a failed transaction on Solscan?

A transaction marked Failed or with an error status did not apply its changes: Solana rolls the whole transaction back, but the fee is still charged. The reason is usually an instruction that returned an error, and you can read it in the error message and program logs near the bottom of the transaction page.

• Confirm the status first. Look for Success or Failed at the top. A transaction that shows an error did not move the funds, even if a balance change preview appears.
• Read the error message. Solscan shows a short reason, such as insufficient funds, an account not writable, or a program error. That is the single most useful line.
• Check the program logs. The logs list each step the program took and where it stopped. This is where a DEX swap will show a slippage or price error.
• Remember the fee is gone. On Solana the fee is paid even when execution fails, so a failed transaction still costs a small amount of SOL.

Common causes are too little SOL to cover rent or the fee, a swap that moved past its slippage limit, an expired blockhash from waiting too long to sign, or a program that simply returned an error. Fix the cause in your wallet and retry; you do not need Solscan to do anything.

How do I check a token’s mint authority to spot a scam token?

Open the token’s page by searching its mint address, then check whether the mint authority and freeze authority are still enabled. If mint authority is still set, the creator can mint more tokens and inflate the supply at any time; if it has been revoked, no more can ever be created. A live freeze authority lets the issuer freeze token accounts.

1. Get the mint address. Copy the token’s mint (contract) address, which is the token’s identity on Solana. Never identify a token by name or ticker alone, because anyone can copy a name.
2. Search the mint on Solscan. Paste the mint address to open the token page, not the market page, so you see the on-chain authority data.
3. Find the authorities. Look for the mint authority and freeze authority fields in the token overview. Solscan’s token research covers holders, supply and authorities.
4. Judge the mint authority. If it shows an address (enabled), the issuer can still call MintTo and increase supply. If it shows null or disabled, supply is fixed and no further tokens can ever be minted.
5. Check the freeze authority. If it is still enabled, the issuer can freeze token accounts so they cannot transfer. If it is revoked, freezing is permanently disabled.

The SPL token standard defines these two roles: the mint authority is the account allowed to create new tokens, and revoking it (setting it to none) is irreversible and fixes the supply. A token whose mint authority is still held by the team is a risk signal, not proof of a scam, so combine this check with holder concentration and liquidity before you act. Remember that crypto assets are volatile and this is not financial advice: reading authorities is a security step, not a promise about price.

Which Solana explorer should I use: Solscan, Solana Explorer or SolanaFM?

Solscan is the easiest starting point for reading transactions, tokens and NFTs. Solana Explorer is the official, minimalist explorer that suits raw data and devnet or testnet debugging. SolanaFM adds an indexer and API aimed at developers and analysts, and has been operated by the Solana DEX aggregator Jupiter since September 2024.

All three read the same Solana data, so the choice is about presentation and tooling rather than correctness. Use Solscan to read a transaction or research a token, Solana Explorer when you want the leanest view of blocks and programs, and SolanaFM when you need to query data through an API or dig into individual instructions. For a sense of how Solana’s speed compares with older chains, see how long a Bitcoin transaction takes.

What are the most common Solscan mistakes and how do I avoid them?

The most common mistakes are searching the wrong network, trusting a token by its name or logo, expecting a failed transaction to refund its fee, and entering a seed phrase into a phishing clone. Check the cluster, verify the mint address, read the status and fee, and never type a seed phrase anywhere but your own wallet app.

• Searching mainnet for a devnet or testnet transaction. Solana has three clusters: mainnet-beta, devnet and testnet. Devnet and testnet tokens are not real, so a test transaction looks like a normal one unless you check the cluster.
• Judging a token by its name, ticker or logo. Scammers reuse famous names. Always look up the mint address and check the authorities, not the branding.
• Expecting a refund for a failed transaction. The fee is charged either way, and a failed transaction that shows a balance change preview did not actually move funds.
• Sending to a listed address without checking it is yours. The receiver on a transaction is just the address on chain. Confirm the full address matches the one you intend before sending.
• Typing a seed phrase into a verification site. No explorer, support agent or airdrop will ever need your seed phrase. Entering it hands over the wallet. See how to store a seed phrase.
• Treating the explorer as a wallet. Solscan cannot sign, send, reverse or recover anything. Use your wallet to act, and the explorer only to read. See our wallets hub for wallet choices.