Solidus Explorer
How this works, explained once
Reading the Solidus chain: blocks, transactions, validators and DID operations, and how to verify any of it yourself.
30 articles
- How to Read a Solidus BlockOpen /blocks on the Solidus explorer and look at the top row, whatever block sits there when you load it.
- Resolve a Decentralized Identifier, Yourself, Right NowOne HTTP request resolves a decentralized identifier, and you can send it right now.
- Query the Solidus Chain Yourself: A JSON-RPC WalkthroughNo sign-up, no API key, no explorer UI in between. This is one curl command against a public endpoint, run just now:
- An AI Agent's Identity, Resolved On-ChainCall ownerOf on it, and you get a wallet address. Call tokenURI, and that address unfolds into a did:solidus decentralized identifier.
- Why an Identity Anchor Can Never Hold or Send ValueA cryptographer at a national research institute, reviewing the chain, put it plainly: "I can decode your DID and read your entire payment history." It's a reasonable thing to assume, most blockchain…
- One Seed, Many Identities: How Pairwise DIDs WorkThe unlinkability implementation described here is unaudited.
- What's On-Chain for a Verifiable Credential (and What Isn't)Open explorer.solidus.network/credential/1 and you'll see a full credential detail view: an issuer DID and a holder DID, a credential type and issuance date, a credential hash, an on-chain…
- Merkle Trees and State Roots, Shown, Not Just DefinedA Merkle tree is a shape before it's anything else: a row of leaves at the bottom, each pair hashed together to form the row above, that row hashed in pairs again, and so on, until exactly one hash…
- How Finality Works on Solidus (HotStuff BFT)Open the Solidus explorer's block list and click the block at the top; on its detail page the Status field reads Finalized.
- The Validator Committee: The Spec Says Twenty-One, the Registry Says Five, and Four Actually ProposeThe protocol's target design is a 21-of-100 committee, elected by verifiable random function from a pool of registered validators.
- Reading the Network Stats Dashboard: The Milestones Now Check Out, and Two Tiles Should Not ExistThe stats page was fetched with no account and its markup read directly.
- The Nonce That Stops a Replayed Transaction: Strict Equality, and a Failure That Costs NothingA signed transaction is a reusable object. Anybody who sees it holds a valid signature over the same instruction, and nothing about the signature stops them submitting it a second time.
- Does Solidus Have Gas Fees? No, and Reading the Fee Schedule Alone Gives You the Wrong AnswerThere is no gas. No metered execution, no gas limit, no price you bid, and no gas field on a block: a block carries a height, a parent, a proposer, a round, a state root, timestamps, its transactions…
- Anatomy of a Transaction: One Real Failed Transfer, Read End to EndCorrection, made the same day this page was written. It first said the chain was "not producing blocks", because the tip had not moved across a nineteen-minute observation.
- The Quorum Certificate Behind Every Block: Well Built, and Invisible From OutsideA block on its own is a proposal. One participant assembled it and signed it, and nothing about that makes it agreed.
- How Solidus Decides Which Chain Is Real: Not the Longest One, and You Cannot Watch It HappenA proposer does not extend whichever branch has the most blocks.
- What Happens When a Proposer Goes Silent: A Bounded Wait, and How to Tell That Is Not What You Are SeeingEvery round has a deadline. It starts at two seconds.
- How the Next Proposer Is Picked: A Lottery in the Specification, a Rotation on the WireEach round is a lottery with a verifiable result.
- Committee Election: The Random Draw Picks a Leader, Not the Committee, and the Committee Came From GenesisThe verifiable random draw does not select the committee. It selects which member of an existing committee proposes in a given round, which is a different question with its own page.
- Proof of Identity: We Did Not Invent the Term, and It Is Not How This Chain Reaches AgreementIt was planned as an explanation of the one term we invented.
- How This Chain Resists Sybil Attacks Today: The Economic Gate Exists, and It Is Not What Is Holding the DoorA Sybil attack is one party pretending to be many. For a chain, the question is what stops somebody spinning up a thousand participants and outvoting everybody.
- The Trust Anchor Behind a did:solidus Lookup: The Chain Has One, and Your Lookup Is Not Connected To ItA trust anchor is the thing you accept without further proof, so that everything else can chain back to it.
- Checking Whether a Credential Issuer Is Trusted: The Check Is Live, and the Answer for Everybody Today Is Not EnrolledA credential tells you who issued it. It cannot tell you whether that issuer should be believed.
- Why There Is No Light Client Yet: Nobody Could Write One From Outside, Because the Node Does Not Publish What One ConsumesThere is no light client. A search for one across the protocol, the packages and the published SDKs returns nothing at all, and this page is not going to describe a plan as though it were a component.
- The Sparse Merkle Tree Behind Solidus State: Four Trees, 256 Levels, Rebuilt From Scratch Every Time and Then Thrown AwayFour trees, not one. Accounts, identifiers, credentials and validators each get their own, and their four roots are hashed together into the single state root that appears in every block header.
- Anatomy of a did:solidus Document: Every Field Explained, and Three Places Where It Is Not the Shape a Standard Library ExpectsOne call returns the whole thing, with no account and no key:
- Anchor Transactions: The Word Names Three Different Operations, and Only One of Them Puts Anything Readable On This ChainThey are not variants of one operation. They differ in what is stored, on which chain, and in what anybody can later check.
- Two Chains, Not Two Copies: Their Public Interfaces Do Not Overlap At All, and a Signature Is Not Bound To EitherThe first names itself in its own response, and returns a genesis hash and a version alongside its current height, which was 83,727 when this was measured.
- BLS Aggregation Behind Finality: Real Cryptography, a Certificate Nobody Outside Can See, and a Staking Path That Cannot Admit YouAgreement means many participants each signing the same thing.
- How a Transaction Is Signed: Four Fields, a Strict Verifier That Closes a Real Attack, and a Signature Over JSONFetch any transaction and you get four fields.