Deploying an explorer

Before delving into this tutorial, you should have deployed a local subnet. If you're connecting to an existing remote subnet and not following the guide, make sure that you have a local docker installation.

These are instructions for deploying a basic, non-customised, local subnet explorer. The resulting instance will not provide all Blockscout features not be appropriate for production use.

1. Get Blockscout

git clone https://github.com/blockscout/blockscout
cd ./blockscout/docker-compose

1. Edit ./envs/common-blockscout.env and set

INDEXER_DISABLE_PENDING_TRANSACTIONS_FETCHER=true           
INDEXER_DISABLE_INTERNAL_TRANSACTIONS_FETCHER=true

The default setup assumes a local subnet with the Ethereum RPC on localhost:8545. If you're connecting to a remote RPC, remember to also set ETHEREUM_JSONRPC_HTTP_URL accordingly.

Some frontend calls use hardcoded absolute URLs. Unless you're only accessing the Blockscout interface on localhost, make sure to review the environmental variables in the different files under ./envs/ and adjust addresses (e.g. BLOCKSCOUT_HOST in envs/common-blockscout.env and NEXT_PUBLIC_STATS_API_HOST in envs/common-frontend.env. You'll also need to make sure the required ports are accessible (at least 80, 8080, and 8081).

1. Start Blockscout

docker compose -f docker-compose-no-build-geth.yml up -d

The web interface will be available at http://localhost/

If you need to take down the setup, run docker compose -f docker-compose-no-build-geth.yml down. Note that the data store is mounted externally and will be reused on redeployment. If you want to clear the database, run rm -rf ./services/blockscout-db-data.