On-Chain Research

About this course

Block explorers, mempools, event logs, and on-chain analytics tools are the closest thing crypto has to a public ledger of intentions. Most users glance at Etherscan and learn nothing. This course teaches the reading skills that let you trace a transaction through its internal calls, decode the calldata that a signature would authorise, distinguish a verified proxy from its actual implementation, and recognise the wash-trading and insider-wallet patterns that precede most scam tokens. Eight lessons of about 22 minutes each, working from primitives (addresses, transactions, event logs) up to a complete worked pre-purchase analysis. No price predictions, no buy/sell signals — just the literacy that lets you verify rather than trust.

What you'll be able to do

• Read any block explorer (Etherscan, Solscan, BscScan) end-to-end: transactions, internal calls, event logs, calldata.
• Understand the mempool as a public information surface and recognise the trade-off between public and private transaction submission.
• Decode any approval or signature request against a contract's verified source code before signing.
• Distinguish a verified proxy from its current implementation and audit both.
• Identify the ten most-common token-contract red flags (mint functions, blacklists, hidden admin keys, fee-on-transfer, ownership renunciation theatre) from on-chain inspection alone.
• Read a Dune dashboard skeptically — what its parameters are hiding, what its time-window choices are doing.
• Recognise wash-trading and insider-wallet patterns in the on-chain footprint before they show up in price.
• Run the complete pre-purchase research walk-through on any new token in under 30 minutes.

Lessons

1. 1

   Lesson 1 — Block explorer literacy: addresses, transactions, event logs

   ~22 min

   Every blockchain has a public ledger and every block explorer is just a friendly window into it. Today: the four primitives you need to read fluently.

2. 2

   Lesson 2 — The mempool and pending state: visibility, MEV, and private submission

   ~22 min

   Once you've broadcast a transaction, it sits in public view before being included. Today: what's in the mempool, who watches it, and when to bypass it.

3. 3

   Lesson 3 — Approvals and signatures revisited: decoding what you're about to sign

   ~22 min

   Most wallet drains are signed willingly. Today: how to decode the four signature types so you know exactly what you're authorising, before you authorise it.

4. 4

   Lesson 4 — 'Verified' on Etherscan: proxies, implementations, and the real bytecode

   ~22 min

   A 'verified contract' label looks reassuring. Today: what verification actually proves, why proxies hide the load-bearing code, and how to check both layers.

5. 5

   Lesson 5 — Token contract red flags: ten patterns to scan for

   ~22 min

   Most malicious tokens reveal themselves in the contract source. Today: the ten code patterns that should trigger immediate skepticism, and how to spot each one.

6. 6

   Lesson 6 — Dune dashboards and SQL literacy: reading analytics skeptically

   ~22 min

   Dune is the public-square of on-chain analytics. Today: how to read a dashboard for what it shows, what it hides, and which parameters are doing the work.

7. 7

   Lesson 7 — Wash trading and insider-wallet patterns

   ~22 min

   Suspicious on-chain footprints show up in the data before they show up in the price. Today: the patterns that distinguish organic activity from manufactured.

8. 8

   Lesson 8 — The complete pre-purchase research walk-through

   ~20 min

   Course closing. The 30-minute checklist combining everything from Lessons 1–7, applied to any new token before allocation.

Final quiz

When you've worked through every lesson, pass the final quiz to mark the course complete. You can retry any number of times.