Great Firewall of China, a tool employed by Beijing to restrict its citizens from accessing websites such as Facebook and Google, has blocked access to Etherscan, a well-known Ethereum blockchain browsers.
The information was revealed by GreatFire, a non-profit data tracking organization. GreatFire has pointed out that China had blocked access to Etherscan since October 2019.
This implies IP addresses in mainland China were unable to access Etherscan’s domain.
The restricted access on Etherscan was hardly noticed. However, Etherscan’s CEO Matthew Tan stated that the firm is aware of China’s action over the past three months. As per GreatFire, which lists websites that are inaccessible in China, the last day on which there was “no censorship detected” was on August 17, 2019.
GreatFire has further stated that access to Ethereum block explorer was completely restricted on October 29, 2019. However, GreatFire did not provide any specific time at which the ban was initiated.
Nevertheless, other Ethereum block explorers are working without any issues in China. Notably, a domestic version of Etherscan, cn.etherscan.com, is working without any issue in China.
A block explorer is basically a website or a tool that permits users to monitor blocks, network hashrate, wallet addresses, transaction info and other key info oon a specific blockchain, such as the Bitcoin (BTC) blockchain, Ethereum (ETH) blockchain or the Litecoin (LTC) blockchain.
For the numero uno crypto Bitcoin, there are several block explorers, including Btc.com, Blockchain.com and Blockexplorer.com.
In the meantime, Etherscan is one among several block explorers such as Ethplorer.io and Etherchain.org. In March 2019, popular Ethereum wallet provider MyEtherWallet rolled out the alpha version of EthVM, a new open-source Ethereum blockchain explorer.
