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:
| Field | Description | Type |
|---|---|---|
| address | the address of the appearance | address |
| blockNumber | the number of the block | blknum |
| transactionIndex | the index of the transaction in the block | blknum |
| traceIndex | the zero-based index of the trace in the transaction | blknum |
| reason | the location in the data where the appearance was found | string |
| name | the name of the address, if found | string |
| timestamp | the timestamp for this appearance | timestamp |
| date | the date represented by the timestamp | string |
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:
| Field | Description | Type |
|---|---|---|
| blockNumber | the number of the block | blknum |
| transactionIndex | the zero-indexed position of the transaction in the block | blknum |
| logIndex | the zero-indexed position the log in the block, if applicable | blknum |
| transactionHash | the hash of the transaction that triggered this reconciliation | hash |
| timestamp | the Unix timestamp of the object | timestamp |
| date | a calculated field – the date of this transaction | datetime |
| assetAddr | 0xeeee…eeee for ETH reconciliations, the token address otherwise | address |
| assetSymbol | either ETH, WEI, or the symbol of the asset being reconciled as extracted from the chain | string |
| decimals | The value of decimals from an ERC20 contract or, if ETH or WEI, then 18 | uint64 |
| spotPrice | The on-chain price in USD (or if a token in ETH, or zero) at the time of the transaction | double |
| priceSource | The on-chain source from which the spot price was taken | string |
| accountedFor | the address being accounted for in this reconciliation | address |
| sender | the initiator of the transfer (the sender) | address |
| recipient | the receiver of the transfer (the recipient) | address |
| begBal | the beginning balance of the asset prior to the transaction | int256 |
| amountNet | a calculated field – totalIn - totalOut | int256 |
| endBal | the on-chain balance of the asset (see notes about intra-block reconciliations) | int256 |
| encoding | The topic of the event (if this is an ERC20 reconcilation), the four-byte signature of the transaction otherwise | string |
| signature | If possible, the articulated name of the function or event signature | string |
| reconciliationType | One of regular, prevDiff-same, same-nextDiff, or same-same. Appended with eth or token | string |
| reconciled | a calculated field – true if endBal === endBalCalc and begBal === prevBal. false otherwise. | bool |
| totalIn | a calculated field – the sum of the following In fields | int256 |
| amountIn | the top-level value of the incoming transfer for the accountedFor address | int256 |
| internalIn | the internal value of the incoming transfer for the accountedFor address | int256 |
| selfDestructIn | the incoming value of a self-destruct if recipient is the accountedFor address | int256 |
| minerBaseRewardIn | the base fee reward if the miner is the accountedFor address | int256 |
| minerNephewRewardIn | the nephew reward if the miner is the accountedFor address | int256 |
| minerTxFeeIn | the transaction fee reward if the miner is the accountedFor address | int256 |
| minerUncleRewardIn | the uncle reward if the miner who won the uncle block is the accountedFor address | int256 |
| prefundIn | at block zero (0) only, the amount of genesis income for the accountedFor address | int256 |
| totalOut | a calculated field – the sum of the following Out fields | int256 |
| amountOut | the amount (in units of the asset) of regular outflow during this transaction | int256 |
| internalOut | the value of any internal value transfers out of the accountedFor account | int256 |
| selfDestructOut | the value of the self-destructed value out if the accountedFor address was self-destructed | int256 |
| gasOut | if the transaction’s original sender is the accountedFor address, the amount of gas expended | int256 |
| totalOutLessGas | a calculated field – totalOut - gasOut | int256 |
| prevAppBlk | the block number of the previous appearance, or 0 if this is the first appearance | blknum |
| prevBal | the account balance for the given asset for the previous reconciliation | int256 |
| begBalDiff | a calculated field – difference between expected beginning balance and balance at last reconciliation, if non-zero, the reconciliation failed | int256 |
| endBalDiff | a calculated field – endBal - endBalCalc, if non-zero, the reconciliation failed | int256 |
| endBalCalc | a calculated field – begBal + amountNet | int256 |
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:
| Field | Description | Type |
|---|---|---|
| nApps | the number of appearances for this monitor | blknum |
| firstApp | the first block at which this address appears | blknum |
| latestApp | the latest block at which this address appears | blknum |
| sizeInBytes | the size of this monitor on disc | uint64 |
| tags | the tag given to this address | string |
| address | the address being monitored | address |
| name | the name given to this address | string |
| isCustom | true if this address is customized | bool |
| deleted | true if deleted, false otherwise | bool |
| symbol | string | |
| source | string | |
| decimals | uint64 | |
| isContract | bool |
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:
| Field | Description | Type |
|---|---|---|
| tags | colon separated list of tags | string |
| address | the address associated with this name | address |
| name | the name associated with this address (retrieved from on-chain data if available) | string |
| symbol | the symbol for this address (retrieved from on-chain data if available) | string |
| source | user supplied source of where this name was found (or on-chain if name is on-chain) | string |
| decimals | number of decimals retrieved from an ERC20 smart contract, defaults to 18 | uint64 |
| petname | the petname such as described here http://www.erights.org/elib/capability/pnml.html | string |
| deleted | true if deleted, false otherwise | bool |
| isCustom | true if the address is a custom address, false otherwise | bool |
| isPrefund | true if the address was one of the prefund addresses, false otherwise | bool |
| isContract | true if the address is a smart contract, false otherwise | bool |
| isErc20 | true if the address is an ERC20, false otherwise | bool |
| isErc721 | true if the address is an ERC720, false otherwise | bool |
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:
| Field | Description | Type |
|---|---|---|
| address | the smart contract that implements this abi | address |
| interfaces | the list of events and functions on this abi | Function[] |
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:
| Field | Description | Type |
|---|---|---|
| address | the address for this count | address |
| nRecords | the number of appearances for the given address | uint64 |
| fileSize | the size of the monitor file containing those appearances | uint64 |
Base types
This documentation mentions the following basic data types.
| Type | Description | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| address | an ‘0x’-prefixed 20-byte hex string | lowercase |
| blknum | an alias for a uint64 | |
| bool | either true, false, 1, or 0 | |
| datetime | a JSON formatted date | as a string |
| double | a double precision float | 64 bits |
| hash | an ‘0x’-prefixed 32-byte hex string | lowercase |
| int256 | a signed big number | as a string |
| string | a normal character string | |
| timestamp | a 64-bit unsigned integer | Unix timestamp |
| uint64 | a 64-bit unsigned integer |