Skip to main content

EthExplorer: A Tool for Forensic Analysis of the Ethereum Blockchain

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Computer Performance Engineering (EPEW 2019)

Abstract

This paper presents EthExplorer, a graph-based tool for analysing the Ethereum blockchain. EthExplorer has been designed for the assessment of Ethereum transactions, which represent diverse and complex activities in a large-scale distributed system. EthExplorer shows Ethereum addresses as nodes and transactions as directed arcs between addresses. The graph is annotated in several ways: arcs are scaled according to the amount of Ether they carry and the nodes are colour encoded to indicate types of addresses, such as exchanges, miners or mining pools. Ether transfer transactions and smart contracts are distinguished by line styles. EthExplorer can be used to trace the flow of Ether between addresses. For a given address all its output or input transactions with the corresponding receiver or sender addresses can be found. The set of considered addresses can be increased by adding selected addresses to the set of analysed addresses.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    https://gephi.org/toolkit/.

  2. 2.

    See https://etherscan.io/tx/0x25f0937d338c3b3a09e8e97dc4f2777afce4910c383523ae37f26278a3e725bc for the transaction(s) shown in the figure.

References

  1. Bulterin, V.: A next-generation smart contract and decentralized application platform (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Wood, G.: Ethereum: a secure decentralised generalised transaction ledger (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Nakamoto, S.: Bitcoin: a peer-to-peer electronic cash system (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  4. O’Kane, E.: Detecting patterns in the Ethereum transactional data using unsupervised learning. Master’s thesis, University of Dublin, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, August 2018

    Google Scholar 

  5. Chan, W., Olmsted, A.: Ethereum transaction graph analysis. In: 2017 12th International Conference for Internet Technology and Secured Transactions (ICITST), pp. 498–500 (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Chen, T., et al.: Understanding ethereum via graph analysis. In: IEEE INFOCOM 2018 - IEEE Conference on Computer Communications, pp. 1484–1492, April 2018

    Google Scholar 

  7. McGinn, D., Birch, D., Akroyd, D., Molina-Solana, M., Guo, Y., Knottenbelt, W.J.: Visualizing dynamic bitcoin transaction patterns. Big Data 4(2), 109–119 (2016)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. How Can I Add My Name Next To Address On Etherscan? (2017). https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4d612u/how_can_i_add_my_name_next_to_address_on_etherscan/d1p8ns9/. Accessed 10 Jan 2019

  9. Zamyatin, A., Wolter, K., Werner, S., Harrison, P.G., Mulligan, C.E.A., Knottenbelt, W.J.: Swimming with fishes and sharks: beneath the surface of queue-based Ethereum mining pools. In: 2017 IEEE 25th International Symposium on Modeling, Analysis, and Simulation of Computer and Telecommunication Systems (MASCOTS), pp. 99–109, September 2017

    Google Scholar 

  10. Vogelsteller, F., Buterin, V.: ERC-20 token standard, 2015 (2018). https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/blob/master/EIPS/eip-20-token-standard.md

  11. Entriken, W., Shirley, D., Evans, J., Sachs, N.: Non-fungible token standard, document ERC-721, September 2018

    Google Scholar 

  12. Huge ethereum mixer. Accessed 19 July 2018

    Google Scholar 

  13. Fruchterman, T., Reingold, E.: Graph drawing by force-directed placement (1991)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Hu, Y.F.: Efficient and high quality force-directed graph drawing. Math. J. 10, 37–71 (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Bastian, M., Heymann, S., Jacomy, M.: Gephi: An open source software for exploring and manipulating networks (2009)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on the paper, especially for the suggestion to make our database directly available to the public. We will work on this.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Katinka Wolter .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Marchenko, Y., Knottenbelt, W.J., Wolter, K. (2020). EthExplorer: A Tool for Forensic Analysis of the Ethereum Blockchain. In: Gribaudo, M., Iacono, M., Phung-Duc, T., Razumchik, R. (eds) Computer Performance Engineering. EPEW 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12039. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44411-2_7

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44411-2_7

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-44410-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-44411-2

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics