Sentinel's Native Blockchain Explorer Makes its Debut

The Sentinel Growth DAO has formally launched Sentinel dVPN's new native blockchain explorer, an important milestone in chain sovereignty and transparency for the entire network.

It is integrated directly into the official Sentinel website, and can be accessed at the subdomain explorer.sentinel.co.

Background

Sentinel x Interbloc

This proprietary chain explorer is the product of a partnership between Sentinel and Wyoming, USA-based blockchain technology providers Interbloc. They would be best-known to most readers as the creators of the Cosmoshield service, which has recovered over $2.5M USD worth of funds for scam victims across the Cosmos Ecosystem.

Sentinel's chain explorer uses Interbloc's recent-launched Inbloc explorer as its foundation. Interbloc prioritized user convenience, performance, and simplicity when developing Inbloc; and Sentinel's take on it continues that ethos.

For more information on the background behind the explorer's development, our announcement article from January is available below.

Context

Sentinel and its community have traditionally used Cosmostation's popular third-party blockchain explorer Mintscan almost exclusively since the project transitioned to the Cosmos Ecosystem in 2021.

In January of this year, a decision was made by the Sentinel Growth DAO, a community-focused entity which works in tandem with the Sentinel Foundation to form the development core of the project, to develop a proprietary alternative to Mintscan.

This was done for a variety of reason, including (but not limited to):

Highlighting and contributing to the transparent, trustless nature of Sentinel and decentralized VPN.
Consolidation of important data from the official Sentinel website with the blockchain-focused facets of the project like validators, governance, and coin transactions.
Addressing the need for specialized chain explorer features unavailable on a one-size-fits-all multichain platform like Mintscan.
Promoting the image of Sentinel as a sovereign layer one blockchain and ecosystem in itself (as opposed to solely a component of Cosmos).
Addressing recurring project expenses related to Mintscan.

Features

So, what can you do with the new Sentinel Explorer?

Anybody with experience using blockchain explorers will instantly feel at home using this one. In the following sections we'll provide a more specific overview of some of the features, including some which may not be present in blockchain explorers which aren't tailored for dVPN.

The explorer, as with most things digital, is a work in progress and will continue to receive UI improvements, bugfixes, updates, and new features (including wallet integration).

Transactions

Track the movement and flow of Sentinel Coins between wallets. Any Sentinel wallet address can be entered into the search bar, and opening it will provide you with that wallet's total coin balance, transaction history, and staking delegations.

Every recent transaction on the Sentinel blockchain will end up here—from transfers between private custody wallets to team delegations to node connections.

Price data tracking, a ledger of all recent transactions on the chain in chronological order, the total number of transactions over the previous twenty-four hours, and more are also available.

Blockchain performance, pending transactions, and Sentinel Coin price tracking on the explorer's home page.

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Use the dropdown menu at the top-left corner of the explorer to change what currency prices are displayed in. You can choose any nation's fiat currency, commodities like gold, and over a dozen cryptocurrencies from Bitcoin to Chainlink.

Transparency

A lot can be learned about Sentinel's trustless dVPN architecture by inspecting blocks.

In a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain, a block is a collection of transactions that have been verified and added to the blockchain by a validator. Examining that set of collected transactions can provide a bird's eye view into how the Sentinel Network is being used.

The "Blocks" page of the explorer will list every recent block on the Sentinel blockchain. New ones are created every five seconds.

Below, we have block number 16,378,211, which was validated by investment firm TRGC. We can see that within this particular five second span, five dVPN connections were initiated, three were ended, two nodes sent updates to the blockchain, and one wallet sent a balance of DVPN Coins to another wallet.

It should be noted that Sentinel's block time will be reduced from five seconds to three in an upcoming chain upgrade.

Stats and Data

Data from the Sentinel Stats dashboard on the official website has been integrated into the dVPN Stats Menu item. Now, you can seamlessly access network statistics right from the explorer dashboard.

This includes metrics such as network user counts, data consumption, active node counts, network revenue, and more.

Nodes

Identically to the aforementioned stats dashboard, the official website's Node Dashboard has also been integrated into the Sentinel Explorer.

Users can even see how many people are connected to that particular node at any given moment (in this case, three).

Access information, status, and metrics on any Sentinel Node instantly by pasting or typing its address into the search bar. Note that addresses for Sentinel Nodes begin with "sentnode," unlike ordinary Sentinel wallet addresses, which just begin with "sent."

One interesting and entertaining additional feature related to nodes we'd like to highlight is the "Node Locations" pie chart on the home page of the explorer, which reveals which countries are home to the most Sentinel Nodes.

At present, Germany dominates the node network by a considerable margin.

Validators and Governance

Check out the validator set to see who's securing the network. Pages for validators include all of the essential information such as commission rate, voting power, and uptime.

A key departure from Mintscan is that governance participation by validators is now measured by participation in proposals since the validator came online. Many explorers (including Mintscan) will count a vote as missed even if it took place years before the validator in question came into existence.

Finding a validator with a good governance turnout record has never been easier.

Governance proposals both past and present can be also be reviewed on the explorer to stay updated on crucial network decision-making.

With the voting period for Sentinel governance now set at seven days, it's become more important than ever to have information about it accessible to coinholders.

More Sentinel Data Sources

Aside from the new proprietary explorer, other official options for Sentinel statistics, metrics, and information include dVPN Network Statistics and the Node Dashboard on the Sentinel website.

Guides and text resources are maintained here on dVPN News as well as the Sentinel Documentation website.

Third-Party

MathNodes, the developer behind Meile dVPN, maintains MathNodes Metabase, which provides advanced analytics on the Sentinel Ecosystem (signup required). Busurnode, a validator and key figure within the node community, also maintains a live directory of every Sentinel Node at sentnodes.com.

Sentinel will also continue to be supported by Mintscan for the foreseeable future.

For a full directory of Sentinel data, news, and social sources, see the below article.

Special thanks to Trinity Validator for assistance with this article.

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