We are happy to present Blockscout as one of the winners of the first round of the ETC Grants DAO program!
Below please find our email interview with Andrew Gross, technical writer at Blockscout:
Donald McIntyre (DM): Can you describe the team please?
Andrew Gross (AG): The Blockscout team consists of veteran engineers and web development specialists in the web3 space. We've grown over the past year to a core team of 15 in order to build and launch the new Blockscout Portal and support the growing list of blockchains using Blockscout as their EVM explorer.
Igor Barinov is the project founder and continues to drive the vision of Blockscout as a vital and transparent public good. Our lead architect Victor Baranov has been with the project since it began, bringing his indexing and optimization expertise to the Blockscout team. Our senior product manager Ulyana Skladchikova has been instrumental in developing the new version of Blockscout, an all-in-one portal designed to go beyond a traditional block, transaction and account explorer and make chain interaction accessible to all. The remaining engineering, support, communication, and community team members are committed to bringing a best-in-class explorer to the entire multichain ecosystem.
DM: Can you describe the project please?
AG: Blockscout has been providing an open-source block explorer to EVM chains since 2018. Ethereum Classic was one of the first chains to use Blockscout for their explorer needs. While Blockscout hosting is currently managed by the ETC Cooperative, Blockscout has helped with various updates and issues for managed instances (including mainnet and several testnets) over the years.
During the past year, Blockscout has expanded focus to prioritize the new version of Blockscout, called Blockscout Portal. This new version is designed to make exploration easy and accessible, while incorporating new features like a Dapp Marketplace, My Account section, a Rest API, analytics, and much more. In addition to the rebuilt front-end, a new microservices architecture adds modularity and the ability to code new features using Rust. We've made many speed and optimization improvements and are very excited to bring this new version to ETC developers and users.
DM: How much money did you receive from the ETC Grants DAO?
AG: Our team received a generous grant of $50K to optimize, test and migrate the ETC mainnet and Mordor instances to the latest version of Blockscout Portal.
DM: Why did you choose ETC?
AG: We have a long history working with ETC and are aligned with the decentralization principles at the heart of the project. We have a great connection to the ETC community and are excited to work together to enable new methods of exploration and accessibility as ETC occupies a unique niche as a POW EVM chain. At Blockscout, we support all EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) chains, and we're excited to continue supporting the original EVM!
