Accounts

The primary tool of TrueBlocks is chifra export. This tool extracts, directly from the chain, entire transactional histories for one or more addresses and presents that information for use outside the blockchain. The results of this extraction is stored in a data structure called a Monitor.

Monitors collect together Appearances (blknum.tx_id pairs) along with additional information such as Reconciliations (18-decimal place accurate accounting for each asset transfer), Names (associations of human-readable names with addresses), and Abis which track the “meaning” of each transaction through its Functions and Parameters.

Each data structure is created by one or more tools which are detailed below.

Appearance

An appearance is a pointer (blknum, tx_id pair) into the blockchain indicating where a particular address appears. This includes obvious locations such as to or from as well as esoteric locations such as deep inside a tenth-level trace or as the miner of an uncle block. The primary goal of TrueBlocks is to identify every appearance for any address on the chain.

The TrueBlocks index of appearances (created by chifra scrape) makes the production of such a list possible. Appearances are stored in Monitors.

The following commands produce and manage Appearances:

Appearances consist of the following fields:

FieldDescriptionType
addressthe address of the appearanceaddress
blockNumberthe number of the blockblknum
transactionIndexthe index of the transaction in the blockblknum
traceIndexthe zero-based index of the trace in the transactionblknum
reasonthe location in the data where the appearance was foundstring
namethe name of the address, if foundstring
timestampthe timestamp for this appearancetimestamp
datethe date represented by the timestampstring

Reconciliation

When exported with the --accounting option from chifra export, each transaction will have field called statements. Statements are an array for reconciliations. All such exported transactions will have at least one reconciliation (for ETH), however, many will have additional reconciliations for other assets (such as ERC20 and ERC721 tokens).

Because DeFi is essentially swaps and trades around ERC20s, and because and ‘programmable money’ allows for unlimited actions to happen under a single transaction, many times a transaction has four or five reconciliations.

Reconciliations are relative to an accountedFor address. For this reason, the same transaction will probably have different reconciliations depending on the accountedFor address. Consider a simple transfer of ETH from one address to another. Obviously, the sender’s and the recipient’s reconciliations will differ (in opposite proportion to each other). The accountedFor address is always present as the assetAddress in the first reconciliation of the statements array.

The following commands produce and manage Reconciliations:

Reconciliations consist of the following fields:

FieldDescriptionType
blockNumberthe number of the blockblknum
transactionIndexthe zero-indexed position of the transaction in the blockblknum
logIndexthe zero-indexed position the log in the block, if applicableblknum
transactionHashthe hash of the transaction that triggered this reconciliationhash
timestampthe Unix timestamp of the objecttimestamp
datea calculated field – the date of this transactiondatetime
assetAddr0xeeee…eeee for ETH reconciliations, the token address otherwiseaddress
assetSymboleither ETH, WEI, or the symbol of the asset being reconciled as extracted from the chainstring
decimalsthe value of decimals from an ERC20 contract or, if ETH or WEI, then 18uint64
spotPricethe on-chain price in USD (or if a token in ETH, or zero) at the time of the transactiondouble
priceSourcethe on-chain source from which the spot price was takenstring
accountedForthe address being accounted for in this reconciliationaddress
senderthe initiator of the transfer (the sender)address
recipientthe receiver of the transfer (the recipient)address
begBalthe beginning balance of the asset prior to the transactionint256
amountNeta calculated field – totalIn - totalOutint256
endBalthe on-chain balance of the asset (see notes about intra-block reconciliations)int256
encodingthe topic of the event (if this is an ERC20 reconcilation), the four-byte signature of the transaction otherwisestring
signatureif possible, the articulated name of the function or event signaturestring
reconciliationTypeone of regular, prevDiff-same, same-nextDiff, or same-same. Appended with eth or tokenstring
reconcileda calculated field – true if endBal === endBalCalc and begBal === prevBal. false otherwise.bool
totalIna calculated field – the sum of the following In fieldsint256
amountInthe top-level value of the incoming transfer for the accountedFor addressint256
internalInthe internal value of the incoming transfer for the accountedFor addressint256
selfDestructInthe incoming value of a self-destruct if recipient is the accountedFor addressint256
minerBaseRewardInthe base fee reward if the miner is the accountedFor addressint256
minerNephewRewardInthe nephew reward if the miner is the accountedFor addressint256
minerTxFeeInthe transaction fee reward if the miner is the accountedFor addressint256
minerUncleRewardInthe uncle reward if the miner who won the uncle block is the accountedFor addressint256
prefundInat block zero (0) only, the amount of genesis income for the accountedFor addressint256
totalOuta calculated field – the sum of the following Out fieldsint256
amountOutthe amount (in units of the asset) of regular outflow during this transactionint256
internalOutthe value of any internal value transfers out of the accountedFor accountint256
selfDestructOutthe value of the self-destructed value out if the accountedFor address was self-destructedint256
gasOutif the transaction’s original sender is the accountedFor address, the amount of gas expendedint256
totalOutLessGasa calculated field – totalOut - gasOutint256
prevAppBlkthe block number of the previous appearance, or 0 if this is the first appearanceblknum
prevBalthe account balance for the given asset for the previous reconciliationint256
begBalDiffa calculated field – difference between expected beginning balance and balance at last reconciliation, if non-zero, the reconciliation failedint256
endBalDiffa calculated field – endBal - endBalCalc, if non-zero, the reconciliation failedint256
endBalCalca calculated field – begBal + amountNetint256

Notes

Intra-block transactions: In many cases two or more transactions requiring a reconciliation may occur in a single block. Because the Ethereum blockchain only provides balance queries at the end of blocks, it is not possible to query for the balance of an asset at the end of transactions for which there are other following transactions in the block nor for the beginning balance for which there are transactions prior to the given transaction in the same block. In these cases, TrueBlocks simulates the beginning and ending balance as needed and adds partial to the reconciliationType.

Spot Price: If the spotPrice is available from an on-chain source (such as UniSwap), then it represents the ETH/DAI value at the time of the transaction if the reconciliation is for ETH. For other assets, the spotPrice represents the asset’s value relative to ETH, so to price a non-ETH asset in US dollars, one would need to convert first to ETH then to dollars. If a price is not available on-chain, the spotPrice will be zero and the caller is encouraged to get the price for the asset from other sources.

Monitor

A Monitor is a list of Appearances associated with a given address along with various details about those appearances. A monitor is created when a user expresses interest in an address by calling either chifra list or chifra export tool (or querying thier associated APIs).

Once created, a monitor may be periodically freshened by calling either chifra list or chifra export, however, it is also possible to freshen a monitor continually with chifra scrape –monitors. This tool watches the front of the chain and repeatedly calls chifra list.

The following commands produce and manage Monitors:

Monitors consist of the following fields:

FieldDescriptionType
nAppsthe number of appearances for this monitorblknum
firstAppthe first block at which this address appearsblknum
latestAppthe latest block at which this address appearsblknum
sizeInBytesthe size of this monitor on discuint64
tagsthe tag given to this addressstring
addressthe address being monitoredaddress
namethe name given to this addressstring
isCustomtrue if this address is customizedbool
deletedtrue if deleted, false otherwisebool
symbolstring
sourcestring
decimalsuint64
isContractbool

Name

TrueBlocks allows you to associate a human-readable name with an address. This feature goes a long way towards making the blockchain data one extracts with a Monitor much more readable.

Unlike the blockchain data itself, which is globally available and impossible to censor, the association of names with address is not on chain (excepting ENS, which, while fine, is incomplete). TrueBlocks allows you to name addresses of interest to you and either share those names (through an on-chain mechanism) or keep them private if you so desire.

Over the years, we’ve paid careful attention to the ‘airwaves’ and have collected together a ‘starter-set’ of named addresses which is available through the chifra names command line. For example, every time people say “Show me your address, and we will airdrop some tokens” on Twitter, we copy and paste all those addresses. We figure if you’re going to DOX yourselves, we might as well take advantage of it. Sorry…not sorry.

The following commands produce and manage Names:

Names consist of the following fields:

FieldDescriptionType
tagscolon separated list of tagsstring
addressthe address associated with this nameaddress
namethe name associated with this address (retrieved from on-chain data if available)string
symbolthe symbol for this address (retrieved from on-chain data if available)string
sourceuser supplied source of where this name was found (or on-chain if name is on-chain)string
decimalsnumber of decimals retrieved from an ERC20 smart contract, defaults to 18uint64
petnamethe petname such as described here http://www.erights.org/elib/capability/pnml.htmlstring
deletedtrue if deleted, false otherwisebool
isCustomtrue if the address is a custom address, false otherwisebool
isPrefundtrue if the address was one of the prefund addresses, false otherwisebool
isContracttrue if the address is a smart contract, false otherwisebool
isErc20true if the address is an ERC20, false otherwisebool
isErc721true if the address is an ERC720, false otherwisebool

Abi

An ABI describes an Application Binary Interface – in other words, the Function and Event signatures for a given smart contract. Along with Names the use of ABIs goes a very long way towards making your Ethereum data much more understandable.

Similar to names of addresses, ABI files are not available on-chain which means they must be acquired somewhere. Unfortunately, the Ethereum community has not yet understand that Etherscan is not a good place to store this very important information. For this reason, TrueBlocks uses Etherscan to acquire ABI files and therefor one needs to get an Etherscan API key to use this function.

The following commands produce and manage Abis:

Abis consist of the following fields:

FieldDescriptionType
addressthe smart contract that implements this abiaddress
interfacesthe list of events and functions on this abiFunction[]

Notes

See the chifra abis command line for information about getting an Etherscan key.

AppearanceCount

The appearanceCount data model is used mostly by the frontend explorer application. It carries various information about the monitor data for an address.

The following commands produce and manage AppearanceCounts:

AppearanceCounts consist of the following fields:

FieldDescriptionType
addressthe address for this countaddress
nRecordsthe number of appearances for the given addressuint64
fileSizethe size of the monitor file containing those appearancesuint64

Bounds

The Bounds data model displays information about a given address including how many times it’s appeared on the chain and when the first and most recent blocks, timestamps, and dates are.

The following commands produce and manage Bounds:

Bounds consist of the following fields:

FieldDescriptionType
countthe number of appearances for this addressuint64
firstAppthe block number and transaction id of the first appearance of this addressRawAppearance
firstTsthe timestamp of the first appearance of this addresstimestamp
latestAppthe block number and transaction id of the latest appearance of this addressRawAppearance
latestTsthe timestamp of the latest appearance of this addresstimestamp

Base types

This documentation mentions the following basic data types.

TypeDescriptionNotes
addressan ‘0x’-prefixed 20-byte hex stringlowercase
blknuman alias for a uint64
booleither true, false, 1, or 0
datetimea JSON formatted dateas a string
doublea double precision float64 bits
hashan ‘0x’-prefixed 32-byte hex stringlowercase
int256a signed big numberas a string
stringa normal character string
timestampa 64-bit unsigned integerUnix timestamp
uint64a 64-bit unsigned integer

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