Accounts
The primary purpose of TrueBlocks is to extract, directly from the blockchain, the entire transactional history for one or more addresses and present that information for use outside the blockchain. The results of this extraction are 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
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:
| Tools | |
|---|---|
| chifra status monitors | report on the status of the TrueBlocks system |
| chifra list | list appearances for one or more addresses |
| chifra export | export full detail of transactions for one or more addresses |
| chifra monitors | delete, undelete, and remove previously created monitors |
Monitor data is made of the following data 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 |
| isCustom | true if this address is customized |
bool |
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:
| Tools | |
|---|---|
| chifra list | list appearances for one or more addresses |
| chifra export | export full detail of transactions for one or more addresses |
Appearance data is made of the following data fields:
| Field | Description | Type |
|---|---|---|
| blockNumber | the number of the block | blknum |
| transactionIndex | the zero-indexed position of the transaction in the block | blknum |
| address | the address of the appearance | address |
| 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:
| Tools |
|---|
Reconciliation data is made of the following data fields:
| Field | Description | Type |
|---|---|---|
| blockNumber | the number of the block | blknum |
| transactionIndex | the zero-indexed position of the transaction in the block | blknum |
| timestamp | the Unix timestamp of the object | timestamp |
| assetAddr | the accountedFor address for ETH recons, the token address itself otherwise | address |
| assetSymbol | either ETH, WEI or the symbol of the asset being reconciled as extracted from the chain | string |
| decimals | Equivalent to the extracted value of getSymbol from ERC20 or, if ETH or WEI then 18 | uint64 |
| prevBlk | the block number of the previous reconciliation | blknum |
| prevBlkBal | the account balance for the given asset for the previous reconciliation | int256 |
| begBal | the beginning balance of the asset at the blockNumber | int256 |
| begBalDiff | the difference between the expected beginning balance (prevBlkBal) and the queried balance from the chain | int256 |
| amountIn | the top-level value of the incoming transfer for the accountedFor address | int256 |
| amountOut | the amount (in terms of the asset) of regular outflow during this bigint | int256 |
| internalIn | the internal value of the incoming transfer for the accountedFor address | int256 |
| internalOut | the value of any internal value transfers out of the accountedFor account | int256 |
| selfDestructIn | the incoming value of a self-destruct if recipient is the accountedFor address | int256 |
| selfDestructOut | the value of the self-destructed value out if the accountedFor address was self-destructed | 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 |
| 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 |
| gasCostOut | if the transactions original sender is the accountedFor address, the amount of gas expended denominated in WEI. | int256 |
| endBal | the on-chain balance of the asset (see notes above about intra-block reconciliations) | int256 |
| totalIn | a calculated field – the sum of all In fields | int256 |
| totalOut | a calculated field – the sum of all Out fields | int256 |
| totalOutLessGas | int256 | |
| amountNet | a calculated field – totalIn - totalOut | int256 |
| endBalCalc | a calculated field – begBal + amountNet | int256 |
| reconciliationType | One of regular, traces, prevdiff-partial, partial-nextdiff, or partial-partial |
string |
| endBalDiff | a calculated field – endBal - endBalCalc, if non-zero, the reconciliation failed | int256 |
| reconciled | a calculated field – true if endBal === endBalCalc and begBal === prevBlkBal. false otherwise. |
bool |
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.
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:
| Tools | |
|---|---|
| chifra names | query addresses or names of well known accounts |
Name data is made of the following data 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 |
| description | user supplied description for the address | 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:
| Tools | |
|---|---|
| chifra abis | fetches the ABI for a smart contract |
Abi data is made of the following data fields:
| Field | Description | Type |
|---|---|---|
| address | the smart contract that implements this abi | address |
| interfaces | the list of events and functions on this abi | CFunctionArray |
Notes
See the chifra abis command line for information about getting an EtherScan key.
Base types
This documentation mentions the following basic data types.
| Type | Description | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| address | a 20-byte hexadecimal string starting with ‘0x’ | lowercase |
| blknum | an alias for a uint64 | |
| bool | a value either true, false, 1, or 0 |
|
| double | a floating point number of double precision | |
| 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 |