jaack 🛡️ 🔺️@ijaack94
since i took a looong time understanding how their business works, let me tell you how etherscan maintains their explorers
generally, they charge the chain directly, and that amount varies greatly, up to 1.5-2M/year but down to 300K in some cases for a very basic explorer with a limited feature set
when they charge a chain, they usually give some time to developers to lock-in to their product and then ask to register an API key as a mandatory requirement (this doesn't happen with EVERY chain they support, but has happened very often)
for the chains that pay, they offer free API plans up to 5 rps and then their usual pricing model up to 899/month
but how do you know if a chain supports free APIs without looking at the documentation?
it's actually very simple, yet not straightforward to most: they attach a 'A Scan Original' text under the explorer name
so right now that includes the Beacon chain explorer, BNB chain, OP Mainnet (wow! this is new to me! @Optimism what happened?), @base , Snowscan for Avalanche (I still don't understand why they keep it alive since we run snowtrace.io, but ok) and HyperEVM
In these cases, they make it very clear (at least to themselves and to who look close enough) that there's gotta be something LESS to provide since the foundation are not 'supporting' their work (1M/year, I remember to everyone)
the thing is, the folks at etherscan don't realise that they're getting PAID A LOT, even if not from foundations directly
they're getting paid via DIRECT LINKING: from wallets, docs, and other platforms as default explorers
and that is HUGELY monetizable, because that's consistent traffic
for example, semrush tells me that these are the UNIQUE VISITORS of etherscan's FREE explorers last month:
- OP: 102K
- BNB: 2.5M
- Base: 1M
- HyperEVM: 30K
- Avalanche: 16K
not even counting the 4M on etherscan dot io itself
now, I do understand that MAYBE they can't monetize much from the 100K of OP, 30K of hyperEVM and 16K of Avalanche, but that also generally means that you need less traffic to provide via APIs
instead, on 'free' explorers with LITERALLY MILLIONS of users every month, it's still unclear to me how they can't offer a free API plan
FURTHERMORE, they are ofc monetizing from all these explorers: how would call the banners on all homepages and tx details and everywhere else
so yeah, keep using etherscan as you're ONLY source of data guys, keep doing that
if you do that, i'm happy they rug you just when you need it, sorry, I really can't be diplomatic when it comes to this
