A Kaspa block explorer lets you look up any block, transaction or address on the network. Because Kaspa is a BlockDAG making about ten blocks per second, its explorer pages show some fields you will not find on a Bitcoin explorer — blue score, DAA score, merge sets, chain blocks, accepting blocks. This guide walks through each page of our Kaspa explorer field by field, explains what each value means, and shows what to check when you are verifying a payment.
Searching
The search box takes three kinds of input:
- A 64-character hexadecimal string. This can be a block hash or a transaction id; they look the same. The explorer asks the API whether it is a block and otherwise treats it as a transaction.
- A Kaspa address, starting with
kaspa:. The address is checked offline first — prefix, alphabet, checksum and payload length, the same way the Kaspa node decodes it — so a typo is caught before any lookup. - Anything else gets a short explanation of what was expected.
Test-network addresses (kaspatest:) are recognised and reported as such; this explorer covers mainnet only.
The overview: latest blocks and the DAG
The explorer's front page shows:
- DAA score — the network's clock. The emission schedule and every reward reduction are keyed to it.
- Hashrate — computed from the current difficulty as difficulty × 2 × 10, the same formula the public Kaspa API uses.
- Blocks per second — measured by us from the change in DAA score between our ten-minute samples. The target is ten.
- DAG tips — blocks that no other block references yet. At ten blocks a second there are usually several.
- The latest blocks, newest first, with their age, transaction count, blue score and DAA score. A "chain" tag marks blocks on the selected chain.
- The sink — the tip the network's current view builds on — and the pruning point.
A block page, field by field
Hash
The block's identifier, 64 hex characters.
Time
The timestamp the miner put in the header, in UTC, and how long ago that was. Block timestamps are set by miners and are allowed to vary a little; the network's own clock for consensus purposes is the DAA score, not the timestamp.
Colour and chain block
GHOSTDAG colours blocks blue (well connected to the honest majority) or red (too isolated). A chain block is on the selected chain that orders the DAG. Most blocks you see will be blue; a red block is not "invalid" — it is simply not allowed to decide conflicts. The guide What Is BlockDAG? explains the colouring.
Blue score and DAA score
Blue score counts the blue blocks in the block's past — a depth measure similar to, but not the same as, a block height. DAA score is the difficulty-adjustment counter; it decides which month of the emission schedule a block's reward belongs to.
Transactions
How many transactions the block contains. The first is always the coinbase — new coins for the miner.
Difficulty, bits, nonce, version
The proof-of-work target the block had to meet (as difficulty and in the compact "bits" form), the nonce the miner found, and the header version.
Miner address and miner info
Where the coinbase pays, and a short tag from the coinbase payload — often a pool name or node version — when the API decodes it.
Selected parent, parents, children
- Parents are all the blocks this block references.
- The selected parent is the parent with the most accumulated blue work; following selected parents traces the selected chain.
- Children are later blocks that reference this one. A very new block may have none yet.
Every hash links to that block, so you can walk the DAG in either direction.
Merge set (blue / red)
How many blocks this block merges into its history beyond its selected parent's — split into blue and red.
Blue work, merkle root, pruning point
Technical header fields: the accumulated proof of work of the blue past, the root of the block's transaction tree, and the pruning point the block commits to.
The transaction list
Each transaction id links to its page. Coinbase transactions are tagged; for others the list shows the number of outputs and their total.
A transaction page, field by field
Status: accepted or not
In Kaspa a transaction is included in one or more blocks and accepted by a chain block that merges it. "Accepted" is the field to look at when checking a payment. A transaction that is included but not yet accepted is still settling; one whose double-spend was accepted instead will never be.
Block time, in blocks, accepting block
When it was included, which block or blocks contain it (in a DAG the same transaction can appear in parallel blocks), and which chain block accepted it, with that block's blue score.
Inputs and outputs
Inputs are the earlier outputs being spent, shown with their address and amount where the API resolves them. Outputs are the new amounts and the addresses they go to. One output is often change back to the sender.
Total out and fee
Total out is the sum of the outputs. The fee is inputs minus outputs — shown only when every input amount is known. If even one is missing, we leave the fee blank rather than guess.
Mass
Kaspa measures a transaction's resource use as mass, and fees are based on it. Larger transactions — more inputs and outputs — have more mass.
An address page
- Balance in KAS, with all eight decimals, and its US-dollar value at the live price when one is available.
- Transactions — the total count, as reported by the API.
- Type — the address kind decoded from the address itself: Schnorr public key, ECDSA public key or script hash.
- Recent transactions, each with the change it made to this address's balance (received minus spent within that transaction), shown only when all the amounts involved are known.
Some exchange addresses carry a public label from the API's operators; we show it when present. A label tells you who is believed to control the address — it says nothing about the people whose coins may be held there, which is why a large balance on an exchange address is not one person's fortune.
Coming from a Bitcoin explorer
If you know Bitcoin explorers, this table maps the familiar fields to their Kaspa counterparts:
| Bitcoin explorer | Kaspa explorer | What is different |
|---|---|---|
| Block height | Blue score, DAA score | No single height in a DAG; blue score measures depth, DAA score drives difficulty and emission |
| Previous block | Parents, selected parent | A block can have several parents |
| Orphaned block | Red block | Red blocks stay in the DAG; their non-conflicting transactions can still count |
| Confirmations | Acceptance and blocks on top | Inclusion and acceptance are separate steps |
| Fee rate in sat/vB | Fee by mass, in sompi | Mass measures resources, not just bytes |
| Block reward halving | Monthly reward step | See the Kaspa halving countdown |
Two habits help. First, look at acceptance, not inclusion, when checking a payment. Second, do not try to read time from blue scores or DAA scores directly; use the timestamps for "when" and the scores for "how deep" and "which emission month".
Verifying a payment, step by step
- Ask the sender for the transaction id and search for it.
- Check Status: accepted.
- Find your address among the outputs and check the amount — in KAS with eight decimals, or convert with the sompi converter.
- Look at the age. At ten blocks a second, an accepted transaction quickly has many blocks on top of it; wait as long as the value of the payment warrants.
When data is missing
Our explorer reads the public Kaspa REST API. If it does not answer, the page says the data is not available rather than showing something invented, and when an older cached answer is shown, the page says how old it is.
Glossary
- Block hash / transaction id — 64 hexadecimal characters; the explorer's search tells them apart.
- Coinbase — the first transaction of a block, paying new coins to the miner.
- Included / accepted — in a block, versus confirmed into the agreed ledger by a chain block.
- Blue score / DAA score — DAG depth, and the difficulty and emission clock.
- Chain block — a block on the selected chain.
- Merge set — blocks a block brings into its history beyond its selected parent's.
- Mass — resource use of a transaction; fees are based on it.
- Sompi — one hundred-millionth of a KAS; APIs report amounts in sompi.
- Pruning point — beyond it, ordinary nodes may discard old block data.
Bookmark this list next to the explorer; most questions about a Kaspa block or transaction come down to one of these terms.
Our recommendation: For broader crypto news alongside on-chain checks, these Telegram channels are options: @cryptoresearch, @Altcoin_News_Today, @Crypto_MarketWatcher and @Digital_Asset_Daily. Use the explorer to verify anything that matters.
Summary
- Search takes a 64-character hash or a
kaspa:address; addresses are checksum-validated offline. - Block pages show the DAG structure: parents, selected parent, children, merge set, colour.
- Transaction pages show inclusion and, most importantly, acceptance.
- Every number is from the API or computed from it; missing data stays blank.
Open the explorer, or follow the network's clock on the Kaspa halving countdown.