Listing all transactions of a wallet

[ruzpuz]

Hello. My intentions are to list all balance changes of a particular wallet (address provided).

this.provider.resetEventsBlock(0);
this.provider.on(this.wallet.address, (balance) => {
  console.log('New Balance: ' + balance);
});

However this callback is never called. Is there a reason why?

[ricmoo]

The address event type cannot be used for historic information, unfortunately. This is restriction with the indexed data available on-chain.

Fortunately, Etherscan supports what you are trying to accomplish. :)

let provider = new ethers.providers.EtherscanProvider();
let history = await provider.getHistory(address);

This is possible because Etherscan has independently indexed all this data in their own, much more complex DB.

Let me know if you have any issues with this method. :)

[ruzpuz]

@ricmoo thanks for reply, however this kinda feels sub-optimal (it does work what I want)

This searches for all history related to given address. But this operation will be part of the larger procedure that will be run multiple times per day (imagine clearing in banks). And as history grows it will become harder to filter relevant data from history. How to tackle this issue?

reading the docs helped, forget my ignorance... Cheers

[ricmoo]

Oh, the getHistory(address [ , fromBlock [ , toBlock ] ] ) command lets you filter further by block numbers. :)

I agree it isn’t ideal, but the data isn’t actually indexed in the node, so access to it isn’t really available, even passing a block height into the getBalance call. :s

[ricmoo]

Oh! Haha. Good timing. :)

[ricmoo]

Im going to close this now, but if you have any more issues, please feel free to re-open.

Thanks! :)

[Amirhb]

too bad that it doesn't support ropsten!

[ricmoo]

@Amirhb It should support Ropsten. What address are you using? I’ve used it on Ropsten.

[Amirhb]

@ricmoo I just instantiated ethers and used the code snippet you mentioned above. The history fetched out from the mainnet. Am I missing something?

[ricmoo]

@Amirhb Oh, well yes; the above sample connects to mainnet. :)

To connect to Ropsten, use:

// This is the important part -------------------------v
let provider = new ethers.providers.EtherscanProvider("ropsten");
let history = await provider.getHistory(address);

For more info, check out the documentation for the Providers. And let me know if you have any other issues.

[Amirhb]

@ricmoo Thank you so much

[jacko125]

@ricmoo Has anyone had any issues with EtherscanProvider().getHistory() such as API rate limiting ?

Looking to use the default EtherscanProvider() to retrieve wallet transactions but concerned etherscan will hit rate limit.

[miguelmota]

Is there an alternative to etherscan for transaction history?

[ricmoo]

I’ve used getHistory for quite a while in production wallets, without any obvious throttling issues, but it is a concern I have. It’s hard to know whether any of my users have been throttled in the wild though. And if Etherscan ever dials up throttling it could be an issue.

I’ve been building out some libraries to help mitigate this and will be sharing them, but it is certainly non-trivial...

[emclab]

In 5.4, where to find the doc for provider.getHistory(address)? I am looking for a method to pull out transactions for an account (address) within a period of time.

[AlmostEfficient]

For anyone that stumbles onto this from Google, v5 docs haven't been updated. Here is the function itself -

https://github.com/ethers-io/ethers.js/blob/master/packages/providers/src.ts/etherscan-provider.ts#L423

provider.getHistory(addressOrName: string | Promise<string>, startBlock?: BlockTag, endBlock?: BlockTag)

Example -
I'm using this to get the last few txs for an address that might not have been active recently.

  const currentBlock= await provider.getBlockNumber()
  const blockTime = 15; // ETH block time is 15 seconds

  //Block number 2 hours, 24 hours and 48 hours ago
  const block2 = currentBlock - (2 * 60 * 60 / blockTime);
  const block24 = currentBlock - (24 * 60 * 60 / blockTime);
  const block48 = currentBlock - (48 * 60 * 60 / blockTime);

  // Get all txs for address since 2 hours ago
  let history = await provider.getHistory(address, block2, currentBlock);

  // If you got nothing back (i.e no txns), try 24 hours and then 48 hours
  (history.length === 0 ? history = await provider.getHistory(address, block24, currentBlock) : null);
  (history.length === 0 ? history = await provider.getHistory(address, block48, currentBlock) : null);

[MidnightLightning]

The Ethers.js documentation now has an entry for the Etherscan provider (https://docs.ethers.io/v5/api/providers/api-providers/#EtherscanProvider), but the documentation for the getHistory function is still @TODO...

[aki-anz]

The address event type cannot be used for historic information, unfortunately. This is restriction with the indexed data available on-chain.

Fortunately, Etherscan supports what you are trying to accomplish. :)

let provider = new ethers.providers.EtherscanProvider();
let history = await provider.getHistory(address);

This is possible because Etherscan has independently indexed all this data in their own, much more complex DB.

Let me know if you have any issues with this method. :)

Thank you.

[sullof]

Does the EtherscanProvider work also with Etherscan-compatible stuff, like Polygon Scan or BNB Scan?

[ham-evans]

Any updates on how to do this on other chains? Seems to only be compatible with etherscan based chains, and have not found an equivalent for chains like Polygon, Optimism, Avalanche, etc...

[toniengelhardt]

The address event type cannot be used for historic information, unfortunately. This is restriction with the indexed data available on-chain.

Fortunately, Etherscan supports what you are trying to accomplish. :)

let provider = new ethers.providers.EtherscanProvider();
let history = await provider.getHistory(address);

This is possible because Etherscan has independently indexed all this data in their own, much more complex DB.

Let me know if you have any issues with this method. :)

It seems like this doesn't provide the full history, bc incoming transactions from ERC 20 contracts are missing.

If you look for instance at hayden.eth, getHistory() spits out only 4 transactions, when there are actually 18 transactions involving the address (according to Zerion).

This one for instance is missing, even though it deposits tokens into the contract: https://etherscan.io/tx/0xe632460600b0b967c95f0d39caedd17dee495ae7b8d6004c00442d65dc4c5c28

I'm trying to plot the balance over time in my app (merklin.xyz), which doesn't work with this method. Is there any solution to get all incoming and outgoing transactions?

[MidnightLightning]

incoming transactions from ERC 20 contracts are missing

@toniengelhardt the Etherscan API does separate out "transactions" (non-token transactions initiated by the requested address) from "ERC20 token transfers", as well as "ERC721 token transfers" and other "internal transactions". Their API does have a way to query the ERC20 token transfers (https://docs.etherscan.io/api-endpoints/accounts#get-a-list-of-erc20-token-transfer-events-by-address), which you could query that way, though that's not as convenient as using a "provider"

[toniengelhardt]

incoming transactions from ERC 20 contracts are missing

@toniengelhardt the Etherscan API does separate out "transactions" (non-token transactions initiated by the requested address) from "ERC20 token transfers", as well as "ERC721 token transfers" and other "internal transactions". Their API does have a way to query the ERC20 token transfers (https://docs.etherscan.io/api-endpoints/accounts#get-a-list-of-erc20-token-transfer-events-by-address), which you could query that way, though that's not as convenient as using a "provider"

Thanks so much @MidnightLightning, this looks very promising! I'll give it a shot.

[Josema]

For anyone that stumbles onto this from Google, v5 docs haven't been updated. Here is the function itself -

https://github.com/ethers-io/ethers.js/blob/master/packages/providers/src.ts/etherscan-provider.ts#L423

provider.getHistory(addressOrName: string | Promise<string>, startBlock?: BlockTag, endBlock?: BlockTag)

Example - I'm using this to get the last few txs for an address that might not have been active recently.

  const currentBlock= await provider.getBlockNumber()
  const blockTime = 15; // ETH block time is 15 seconds

  //Block number 2 hours, 24 hours and 48 hours ago
  const block2 = currentBlock - (2 * 60 * 60 / blockTime);
  const block24 = currentBlock - (24 * 60 * 60 / blockTime);
  const block48 = currentBlock - (48 * 60 * 60 / blockTime);

  // Get all txs for address since 2 hours ago
  let history = await provider.getHistory(address, block2, currentBlock);

  // If you got nothing back (i.e no txns), try 24 hours and then 48 hours
  (history.length === 0 ? history = await provider.getHistory(address, block24, currentBlock) : null);
  (history.length === 0 ? history = await provider.getHistory(address, block48, currentBlock) : null);

Is it possible to achieve this with v6?