📄 Blockchain Explorers
A Monitoring-Agent should know how to use blockchain explorers. They are essential to search for real-time and historical information about a blockchain, including data related to blocks, transactions, addresses, and more.
Different blockchains have their own explorers, such as Etherscan for Ethereum and BscScan for Binance Smart Chain, each offering specialized insights into their respective networks.
Inspect L2 Block Composition to Determine Chain's Health
This step is mainly applicable to L2 chains (e.g., Optimism, Base, Manta), which rely on a sequencer to batch and submit transaction data to L1 at regular intervals. These sequencers are critical for proper state propagation and heartbeat detection. When a sequencer fails to submit or propagate valid block data, it may still produce blocks, but these blocks can be misleadingly "alive" while containing no real user activity.
How to Assess:
- Visit the chain’s block explorer and navigate to blocks around the timestamp of the alert.
- Open one or more blocks (especially those close to the alert window).
- Look at the transaction list inside each block:
-
If the block contains only internal or infrastructure-level transactions
(e.g.,setL1BlockValuesEcotone,stateRoot, or other chain-utility contracts),
it strongly indicates that the sequencer is malfunctioning (e.g., out of gas, stuck, or unable to submit rollups to L1).⚠️ This is typically the chain's issue, not Airseeker's.
-
If the block contains multiple user-originated transactions
(e.g., token transfers, contract calls, swaps),
then the chain is likely healthy, and the problem may lie elsewhere (e.g., within Airseeker or Centurion).
-
🚨 Block production alone is not proof of chain health.
A block must contain meaningful activity to indicate a functioning sequencer.
Why This Matters:
- This diagnostic is especially helpful for L2 heartbeat alerts, where false assumptions about uptime can occur.
- Helps provide clear context for escalation (e.g., "chain is producing blocks but no valid txs → sequencer failure").
- Prevents wasting cycles debugging Airseeker when the root issue lies in the chain infrastructure itself.
Note on L1 Chains:
For L1 chains, this analysis is usually not necessary — true L1s rarely go down and do not rely on sequencers.
Heartbeat or deviation alerts on L1s are more often related to:
- Airseeker failure
- Network latency
- RPC issues
Examples
-
🟥 Unsuccessful Block 1
-
✅ Normal & Successful Block 2
