Pera Explorer pairs Algorand's ledger lookup with its own ASA verification program

2026-08-18

explorer · asa · nft · wallet · discovery · web · algorand · updated

Pera Explorer pairs Algorand's ledger lookup with its own ASA verification program

When algoexplorer.io stopped resolving — the Internet Archive holds nothing of the domain after May 2024 — Algorand lost what had been the default public answer to a basic question: did that transaction actually go through? No single replacement took its place; several explorers now share the job. The one with the largest installed user base is Pera Explorer, operated by the company behind Pera Wallet, Algorand's most widely adopted self-[custodial wallet](/glossary/custodial-wallet "A digital wallet model where a company (here, a payments platform like HesabPay) holds the private keys to users' funds on their behalf, like a bank h") (one where users, not the company, control the keys).

Pera Explorer did not start as an explorer. The oldest archived version of the domain, from spring 2022, is a single-purpose page called Pera Assets whose entire pitch was 'Search any [ASA](/glossary/asa "Algorand Standard Asset: the layer-1 mechanism on the Algorand blockchain that allows anyone to issue a token such as a stablecoin or NFT, carrying ba") or NFT on Algorand.' Over the following two years the service gained transaction, block and application pages, account graphs, ASA profiles and [testnet](/glossary/testnet "A separate, experimental version of a blockchain used for testing new features or applications without real-world financial risk. Assets and transacti") support — and when AlgoExplorer shut down, Pera's published migration guide deliberately preserved the old URL structure so existing links kept working. The guide, still archived, described the rebuild as 'a robust and user-centric platform designed to fill the gap left by AlgoExplorer's shutdown and dedicated to serving the Algorand community.'

A search engine for the ledger

A block explorer is to a blockchain what a search engine is to the open web: it takes raw, encoded ledger records — transaction IDs, addresses, block numbers, token identifiers — and renders them as pages anyone can open in a browser. Pera Explorer does this for Algorand's [mainnet](/glossary/mainnet "The main public blockchain network where transactions are recorded and have real value, as opposed to a test network used for experimentation."), the live production chain, and mirrors it on the testnet, a separate experimental network where assets carry no monetary value and developers can stage contracts without financial risk.

The homepage reads as a dashboard of the network's present state: circulating supply (shown at 90.26% of the total), lifetime transaction count (3.68 billion), the day's top gainers and losers, an asset market table with 24-hour volume and total-value-locked columns, and the most active NFT collections — the snapshot's leader, Zappies Reborn, showed about 527 ALGO in volume across seven sales. Algorand's consensus mechanics make that live view meaningful: the network's [Pure Proof-of-Stake](/glossary/pure-proof-of-stake-ppos "A consensus mechanism used by some blockchains to validate transactions and secure the network. Unlike traditional proof-of-work, it relies on validat") finalizes each block in a single round of roughly three seconds with no forks, so a transaction the feed shows as '0 minutes' old is settled, not pending confirmation. There is no probabilistic settlement to wait out — the record is complete the moment it appears.

Beneath the dashboard sit the detail views, each built for a different verification job:

Surface	Concept	Real-World Implication
Transaction pages	Sender, receiver, amount, fee, block, timestamp, raw JSON, and a balance-impact table showing every involved account before and after	Anyone can verify a payment against the ledger minutes after it lands — a NIKO token transfer in the live feed shows a 0.001 ALGO fee and both parties' balances on either side of the move
Block pages	A round's full contents: proposer, fees collected, and a breakdown by transaction type such as payment, asset transfer or application call	Auditors can read everything that happened in a given block and step to the previous or next round — one sampled block lists 21 transactions and 0.021 ALGO in fees and names its proposer
Application pages	The call history of any Algorand smart contract	Developers can watch their own contracts, or third-party ones, operate — the Folks Oracle price feed's page shows calls landing block after block from the same sender
Asset and NFT pages	Total and circulating supply, creator, manager, reserve and [clawback](/glossary/clawback "A feature in some blockchain assets allowing an authorized address to forcibly reclaim tokens from a user’s wallet. It introduces centralized control ") addresses, decimals, creation round, and [on-chain](/glossary/on-chain "Describes transactions that are recorded and permanently stored on a blockchain ledger, making them publicly visible and tamper-resistant.") [ARC-69](/glossary/arc-69 "A standard for how Algorand NFTs store metadata, allowing attributes to be placed on-chain so tokens can be traded across any marketplace that support") metadata for collectibles	A researcher can see who controls a token and how supply is spread before opting in — USDC's holder list surfaces exchange-labeled wallets like MEXC, Pionex and Coinbase among the top balances

From NFT viewer to AlgoExplorer's successor

The transformation happened in public, with each stage recorded in the Internet Archive: 'Pera Assets' in 2022, 'Pera Explorer' with its broader search promise by January 2024, and Algorand's own block-explorer guide noting that throughout 2024 the service added enhanced data visualization, refined search, expanded statistics and NFT transaction-history tracking. The migration guide's most concrete legacy is path compatibility: /tx/, /asset/, /address/, /block/ and /application/ all map one-to-one to AlgoExplorer's scheme, with the single exception that transaction groups moved from /tx/group/ to /tx-group/. Anyone with an old AlgoExplorer bookmark, or a saved link in a doc or support thread, lands on the equivalent Pera page. The guide also flagged what the team considered unfinished business — 'improving search functionality and address detail pages is currently our top priority' — and invited feedback at a public mailbox.

That continuity matters more than convenience. When a chain's default explorer dies, every article, audit report and support answer that ever linked to a transaction page becomes a dead end; Pera's scheme was an explicit effort to keep those links alive.

The ledger's token rules, and how the explorer surfaces them

The assets the explorer indexes are [Algorand Standard Assets](/glossary/algorand-standard-asset 'A built-in mechanism that allows anyone to create and issue new tokens (like stablecoins, utility tokens, or NFTs) directly on Algorand's base layer'), the protocol's built-in token mechanism: any account can issue a fungible token or NFT directly on the base layer, without deploying a contract. One rule of that system explains why every NFT page carries a 'Scan QR to Opt-in' control: an account cannot receive an ASA it has not first opted into. The [opt-in transaction](/glossary/opt-in-transaction "In Algorand, a required transaction that adds a specific token to your account before you can receive it, preventing unwanted tokens from being sent t") exists specifically to prevent unsolicited token spam — nobody can [airdrop](/glossary/airdrop "A free distribution of tokens or NFTs to specific wallet holders, often used to promote a project or reward early supporters. Recipients are usually c") an asset into your wallet without your account declaring it will accept that asset first. The explorer's asset pages bundle that declaration into a QR code tailored for Pera Wallet, and the transaction feed shows the reverse operation too: an account closing out its balance of an ANKH NFT in December 2024, an 'Opt-Out' that returns the asset to its creator.

For NFTs carrying on-chain metadata under the ARC-69 standard, the explorer reads attributes from the note field of the asset's configuration transaction rather than from an external file. That is a durability choice: the attributes live on the chain itself, so they survive a dead gateway or a vanished website, unlike metadata hosted on [IPFS](/glossary/ipfs "A decentralized file storage system where data is stored across multiple computers, making it resistant to censorship or loss. NFTs often use IPFS to ") or a plain URL that can go stale. The tradeoff is that writing those attributes costs another configuration transaction, and reading them back requires an [indexer](/glossary/indexer "A service that organizes and indexes blockchain data so that applications can quickly search and retrieve information from the blockchain.") — which is exactly the service the explorer provides.

The explorer's numbers also hold up against the chain. A spot-check of its GORA page, which lists a 100-million total supply, against the ledger's own indexer confirms the on-chain total is indeed 100 million units — and every transaction page carries a 'Show Raw JSON' toggle plus 'Show on' links to independent viewers like Allo.info, algo.surf and Bitquery, so a disputed record can be re-checked in a second window.

Curation: the badges and the judgment behind them

Beyond indexing, Pera Explorer operates two verification programs that layer its own judgment on top of the neutral ledger data. The ASA verification portal exists, in Pera's words, 'to prevent an ASA from pretending to be affiliated and acting as the token for a project it's not connected to.' The program sorts assets into three states:

Tier	Concept	Real-World Implication
Verified	Fully automated checks: control of the creator wallet, email validation, domain ownership, ID verification, and a uniqueness check on the asset name	A badge next to an asset tells you its issuer's identity has been tied to a real website and wallet — Angry Apple, for example, carries the badge and a 'Learn more' pointer to the portal
Suspicious	Any asset reported to Pera, or involved in an obvious scam or rug pull, is flagged	The flag is visible in Pera's apps as a warning label rather than an absence of a badge
Trusted	Reserved for well-known, already-live ecosystem projects, with no application process	Established names get a higher tier automatically, without having to apply

The same logic extends one level up: a project-verification directory bills itself as 'a research tool for the Algorand community' and lists 126 verified projects, from Tinyman and Pact to NFDomains and Allo. Both programs are automated and free to apply to, with reviews typically under two weeks.

Pera's own terms are careful to scope what a badge means: 'ASA Verification is not an endorsement of the project.' The caveat a reader should hold onto is structural rather than rhetorical — the explorer is operated by the same company as the wallet, so the verified and suspicious badges are that company's judgment, and the interface naturally prioritizes its own wallet's flows, from download prompts to opt-in QR codes aimed at the Pera app. A user of a different wallet who wants an operator-neutral reading of an asset's raw parameters is better served by the Algorand Foundation's open-source Lora or by reading the on-chain fields directly.

None of that diminishes the core service. An explorer is only as trustworthy as the ledger it reflects, and Pera Explorer's own pages point back to that ledger at every step — the raw JSON toggle, the cross-viewer links, the supply figures that match the chain. The badges may be Pera's judgment, but the record underneath is not theirs to change, and that is the difference between a window and the thing it looks at.

Source

Source: https://explorer.perawallet.app