Explorer basics
Arcscan reads the Arc chain and shows it back to you. This page covers how it is arranged: the two sites, the two chains, and what you can reach from the header.
What Arcscan is#
Arcscan is a block explorer for Arc, the chain whose gas is denominated in USDC rather than in a volatile native coin. It indexes blocks, transactions, accounts, contracts and token transfers into its own database and serves them as pages and as a REST API. Nothing on the site asks you to identify yourself, and every page is a view of chain data — Arcscan holds no funds and issues no instructions to the chain on your behalf.
The interface is available in five languages — English, Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Russian — and in a light, dim or dark appearance, or whichever one your system asks for. These documentation pages are translated into all five as well, and the language control in the top bar switches them too.
Two chains, two sites#
Arc has a mainnet and a testnet, and each one has its own Arcscan. The hostname tells you which chain you are looking at, and it is the only thing you need to check.
| Mainnet | Testnet | |
|---|---|---|
| Site | arc-scan.ioOpens in a new tab | testnet.arc-scan.ioOpens in a new tab |
| Chain name | Arc | Arc Testnet |
| Chain id | 5042 (0x13b2) | 5042002 |
| Gas and native currency | USDC | USDC |
| Block time (measured) | 506 ms | 536 ms |
| Finality | Immediate | Immediate |
| Historical state | Archive | Not archival |
Values on the testnet site are test values. Balances there are not money, and a token that exists on testnet has no relationship to a token of the same name on mainnet.
Why the two can never mix#
The two sites are separate deployments: separate indexers, separate databases and separate API processes. There is no chain selector inside a page and no chain parameter in a URL — a block number, a transaction hash or an address always means the chain named by the hostname you are on. The network menu in the top bar is a link to the other site, so switching chains is a full page load onto a different hostname, which is exactly why you can never end up with one chain’s data under the other chain’s heading.
One shared header, two different coverage stories
Both sites are built from one codebase, so they look identical, but what they can answer differs. Mainnet keeps archival state, yet no blocks at all are in its trace index; the testnet index begins at block 53,500,000 rather than at the chain’s first block. Data coverage states exactly what each chain can and cannot answer.Half-second blocks, immediate finality#
Arc produces a block roughly every half second — 506 ms on mainnet and 536 ms on testnet, both measured. A block is final the moment it is committed, so there is no probabilistic settlement window and no reorganisation to wait out.
That changes one habit carried over from Ethereum: Arcscan does not show a confirmation count, because there is nothing for one to count. A transaction that appears in a block is settled. Where another explorer would say “12 confirmations”, Arcscan says the block it is in and leaves it there.
What to watch instead of confirmations
If a transaction you sent is not on the site, it has not been included yet — refresh rather than waiting for a count to climb. At half a second a block you will not be waiting long, so if it still does not appear, check the wallet that sent it.What the navigation reaches#
The header carries the wordmark, a search box, a Home link and five menus. Every entry below is a page on the site you are already on, for the chain that site serves.
| Menu | What is under it |
|---|---|
| Blockchain | Transactions, Internal Transactions, View Blocks, Top Accounts, Contracts |
| Tokens | The native USDC contract, Top Tokens, Token Transfers |
| Resources | Charts And Stats, Fee Tracker, Label Cloud, Token Directory, Top Statistics, Knowledge Base |
| Developers | API Access, API Documentation, Verify Contract, and the decoding tools |
| More | Tools & Services in one panel: unit converter, input data decoder, bytecode to opcode, balance checker, CSV export, advanced filter, token approvals, broadcast transaction and Node Status |
Search is usually faster than the menus: paste a block height, a transaction hash, an address or a token name and Arcscan resolves it to the one page that answers.
Contract verification is testnet-only today
The Developers menu offers Verify Contract on both sites, but only testnet can complete it. Sourcify does not list chain 5042, so no mainnet contract can be verified — through Arcscan or through any other Sourcify client. That is upstream of us and not something Arcscan is holding back.The top bar#
Above the header sits a strip with the USDC price, the current gas price linked to the Fee Tracker, and controls for language, appearance and network. The gas figure is live; the USDC price is a dollar by construction, which is the point of this chain.
What read-only means here#
Arcscan has no accounts. There is nothing to register, no key to obtain before you can read a page, and no wallet connection anywhere in the reading path — every block, transaction, address and token page is public and answers the same way to everybody.
A small number of tools do send transactions: the Write Contract tab on a verified contract, the token-approval revoker and the token-information updater. Those hand the transaction to your own browser wallet, which is the only thing that ever holds a key. Arcscan asks for a wallet only after you click, never on page load, and it cannot move anything without your signature.
Nobody at Arcscan will ask for a seed phrase
Arcscan never needs your seed phrase, private key or a signature to show you data. Any page or message asking for one in Arcscan’s name is not us.The same data is available without a browser. There is a REST API for the indexed views, and a public JSON-RPC endpoint for mainnet reads:
curl -s https://rpc.arc-scan.io \ -H 'content-type: application/json' \ -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"eth_chainId","params":[]}' # {"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"result":"0x13b2"}