Overview
Cexplorer Network Analytics is a free analytics page that shows how full blocks get and how steadily new ones are made. A block is a batch of transactions the blockchain records in one go. Anyone curious whether the network is busy or has room to spare can compare the average block size with the maximum allowed size on one screen1.
The page belongs to Cexplorer, a Cardano block explorer (a search engine for blockchain records) that has run since Cardano's Incentivized Testnet2, a 2019 test network where stake pool operators and ada holders first earned real rewards3. The explorer's front-end code sits in the Vellum Labs GitHub organization4. Intersect, a member-driven organization focused on Cardano's ongoing development, reports that Vellum Labs completed a contract, paid from the Cardano treasury, to maintain Cexplorer5. Five sibling tabs on the same page cover transactions, network health, energy use, node software, and storage.
Key Features
- See how much room each block uses. The Block size used chart plots the average block size per epoch (a five-day period on Cardano) against the 88 KB block limit, so readers can see how close the network runs to full1.
- Check that blocks keep coming. The Block production chart counts how many blocks the network makes in each epoch1.
- Zoom in or out on the history. Both Blocks tab charts switch between ranges from 5 days to 500 days, while the all-time view and chart downloads are reserved for Cexplorer PRO, which requires holding a Cexplorer NFT1.
- A health reading for block production. The Health tab tracks chain density, a measure of how consistently blocks get produced, for the previous epoch and the last 10 and 30 epochs6.
- Follow software upgrades across the network. The Block versions tab shows which node versions (the software stake pools run to make blocks) produced recent blocks, along with hard fork status, meaning progress toward a network-wide upgrade7.
What to Expect
Cexplorer Network Analytics opens on the Blocks tab, with three summary cards at the top: the all-time block count, the average block size in the previous epoch, and the maximum block capacity. The two charts sit below, set to the last 30 days by default1.
The block size chart shows whether blocks have spare space. Cardano produces a block about every 20 seconds, and a protocol setting caps each one at 90,112 bytes, which is the 88 KB figure the page uses8. When the average sits close to that line, blocks are nearly full and the network is busy. Cexplorer's own article on near-full blocks explains what happens to transactions when that occurs9.
Stake pool operators, researchers, and developers may get more from the sibling tabs. The Transactions tab lists transactions per epoch and transactions per second across several time ranges10. The Storage tab shows the total storage needed to hold every record of the network and how much it grows each epoch11. The Energy consumption tab estimates Cardano's yearly power use from counts of stake pools and relays (the servers that pass blocks and transactions across the network), and compares it with Bitcoin's mining-based model12.
Cexplorer Network Analytics needs no account to view. Developers who want the underlying data in their own tools can use the Cexplorer API, which offers a free starter plan with request limits13.
