Avalanche blockchain explorer to shut down as Etherscan fees draw controversy

SnowTrace, a popular blockchain explorer tool for Avalanche, will shut down its website — powered by Etherscan’s Explorer-as-a-Service (EaaS) toolkit — on Nov. 30. The SnowTrace team clarified that only its Etherscan-powered explorer will be shut down.

According to the Oct. 30 announcement, Snowtrace users are required to save their backup information, such as private name tags and contact verification details, before Nov. 30. While the team did not explicitly state the reason for shutting down the explorer, some have pointed to Etherscan’s service fees for its EaaS toolkit. Mikko Ohtama, co-founder of Trading Strategy, claims that an annual subscription to EaaS can cost between $1 million and $2 million per year. Ohtama wrote:

“EtherScan is a very good product, but smart contract verification is something that needs to be decentralised. Regulators and other are not going to be kosher with ‘how do you check this?’ ‘the source code is hosted by a private company in Malaysia.’”

Phillip Liu Jr., head of strategy and operations at Ava Labs, also commented that the protocol is “moving onto something better” and is “absolutely not” ceasing operations. For a fee, Etherscan’s EaaS service provides blockchains with a block explorer and application programming interface (API) solution. A block explorer may be discontinued due to the non-renewal of an EaaS service agreement, insufficient bandwidth, or limited traffic. In such instances, users are recommended to save their data, such as private name tags, transaction notes, contract verification details, etc., before shutting down.

The instance of Snowtrace by @etherscan will be discontinued on 30th November (00:00 UTC)

Thank you @avax and the community for the last 2 years of support and we wish you the best moving forward pic.twitter.com/WdBOzIWOz9

— Snowtrace.io (@SnowTraceHQ) October 30, 2023