Typorithm · hard

Blockchain Tracing

blockchain-tracingosintblockchainledgerexplorer

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Full lesson · 8 learning steps Open any exercise for focused practice

Step 1 of 8 · intro card

Learn Blockchain Tracing

Business & Financial

Public blockchains record every transaction, so block explorers like Etherscan let analysts cluster addresses with heuristics and trace fund flows. This entirely-public-data technique supports fraud investigation, AML compliance, and recovering stolen funds.

On a public blockchain, every transaction is written to a permanent, openly readable ledger. There are no private accounts — anyone can see the full history of any address.

Block explorers such as Etherscan and mempool.space turn that raw ledger into a browsable interface. From there, analysts apply clustering heuristics — for example, treating addresses spent together as one wallet — to group activity by likely owner.

Following the chain of inputs and outputs lets an investigator trace how funds moved between addresses. Because the data is entirely public, this powers AML compliance, fraud investigation, and the recovery of stolen funds.

Public ledgers make every transaction visible.

Explorers like Etherscan browse the chain.

Clustering and tracing follow fund flows.

# public ledgers: every tx is visible
# block explorers: etherscan, mempool
# cluster addresses by heuristics
# trace fund flows (AML / fraud)

Read the implementation

Connect each part of the code to the concept before you type.

1. Public ledger

Public blockchains record every transaction permanently and visibly to anyone.

# public ledgers: every tx is visible

2. Block explorer

Block explorers like Etherscan and mempool.space let anyone browse on-chain transactions.

# block explorers: etherscan, mempool

3. Clustering

Heuristics group addresses likely controlled by the same entity, de-anonymizing activity.

# cluster addresses by heuristics

4. Fund tracing

Following inputs and outputs traces fund flows for AML compliance and fraud recovery.

# trace fund flows (AML / fraud)

A complete learning loop

Understand

Read the concept map and follow the code breakdown.

Reconstruct

Type the implementation, repair mistakes and work through every recall exercise.

Verify

Use the final check without hints; revisit weak concepts in short practice sessions.