Wow!
Solana moves fast.
I mean, really fast — sometimes too fast for comfort.
At first glance NFTs on Solana look simple: a mint, a metadata account, a token account.
But under the hood there are layers — inner instructions, associated token accounts, and program-derived addresses — that twist the story in ways that trip up even seasoned devs.
Whoa!
Tracking a suspicious mint gives you a jolt.
My instinct said “bad actor” before I even parsed the logs.
Then I had to slow down and actually follow the instruction trace to be sure.
Initially I thought the wallet was compromised, but then realized the program had created a temporary ATA and moved funds back out — hmm, tricky.
Here’s the thing.
Block explorers on Solana are not just UIs; they’re your audit lens.
When that lens is smudged you miss inner-instruction transfers, you miss rent-exempt top-ups, and you sometimes read the wrong owner for an SPL token because you’re not checking the latest token-account state.
So you need a reliable explorer and a checklist.
I’ll share mine — messy, opinionated, practical — because somethin’ like confidence matters when money’s on the line.
Short checklist first.
Look at transaction logs.
Open inner instructions.
Verify metadata account data hash.
Check program IDs and cross-reference with known program lists.
Do not trust token symbols alone — many bad actors reuse them.
Okay, this next part gets nerdy.
On Solana, a “transfer” might not be a Transfer instruction at all.
It can be a CPI (cross-program invocation) inside a Metaplex or Candy Machine call that moves lamports and mints a token as a side-effect.
So when you use an explorer, drill into innerInstructions and parsedInstructions.
If you only glance at “instructions” you miss the whole transaction architecture.
How I use a blockchain explorer day-to-day (and why solscan blockchain explorer is my go-to)
I tend to start at the top: transaction signature.
Paste it into an explorer and watch the timeline.
If something looks off I immediately open the “logs” and then inner instructions.
On that note, I usually default to the solscan blockchain explorer for quick parsing because it surfaces program IDs cleanly and shows token transfers inline — which saves me from clicking around like a maniac in a coffee shop, or you know, in a weird 2 a.m. panic.
Seriously?
Yes.
Solscan’s breakdown of instructions and token balances is practical.
But caveat: no explorer is perfect — data indexing can lag during spikes.
Actually, wait — let me rephrase that: explorers can diverge from RPC state for a short window, so always double-check against a full node when in doubt.
What bugs me about many explorers is that they polish the UX but hide the messy parts.
They show a pretty “owner” label, but they don’t show historical ownership changes at the granularity you need.
On one hand a clean label is helpful for onboarding; though actually, for forensic work it’s a liability.
If I see a suspicious NFT sale, I want to map out all prior owners and the exact moment a metadata update happened — the timestamp and block are everything.
Practical trick: store the mint and associated metadata pubkeys in a spreadsheet.
Then watch for any updateAuthority changes or breaks in royalty fields.
If the updateAuthority switches to a new key that never held the token, alarm bells should ring.
Sometimes the change is legit — for example when a project migrates to a governance-controlled account — but often it’s a simple rug under the guise of “upgrade”.
When debugging DeFi interactions on Solana, the pattern repeats.
A deposit call may execute multiple CPIs and program-owned accounts can temporarily hold assets.
If the explorer you’re using omits program-owned accounts, you will think funds were moved to a user wallet when they actually rested inside a PDA.
That error has tripped up teams during audits — very very painful and embarassing.
I’m biased, but I prefer explorers that expose token account lifecycles.
See the createAccount, initializeAccount, and closeAccount traces.
Follow the lamports that refund on close.
Those little lamport refunds tell you whether an account was rent-exempt or ephemeral — and that distinction often reveals intent.
One time I chased a phantom floor price.
A bot had minted a cheap series and flipped them across dozens of ATAs, creating fake “sales” that pumped a floor algorithm.
It looked like organic activity until I opened the logs.
Then it was obvious: same signer, rapid CPIs, and transfers to a sink account that never interacted with marketplaces.
That pattern is common.
Watch for repeated signers and fast repeating instructions — those are the hallmarks of bot behavior.
For teams, integrate explorer links into your incident playbook.
When an alert fires, copy the signature and paste into the explorer.
Look for unexpected program IDs, weird account ownership, and any metadata updates.
Record screenshots or JSON snapshots.
If you’re building product features around NFTs, automate those checks via RPC or indexer and reconcile them against what your chosen explorer shows.
FAQ
How can I tell a genuine NFT metadata update from a malicious one?
Check the updateAuthority history, verify signatures on off-chain metadata endpoints, and inspect the transaction that performed the update — especially inner instructions and which accounts signed.
If the updateAuthority changed right before an expensive mint or a sale, be suspicious.
Also, cross-reference program IDs involved in the transaction with known, vetted program lists (and if you don’t have one, create one — seriously it helps).
Do explorers show royalties accurately?
They show what’s on-chain, but marketplaces may or may not honor on-chain royalty fields.
So yes, explorers tell you the data; though actually, whether that data is enforced at sale time depends on marketplace behavior.
Track marketplace program interactions to see enforcement in action.
Which signs indicate bot-driven market manipulation?
Rapid sequential transactions from the same signer, many temporary ATAs, transfers to accounts that never interact with external wallets, and repeated minting patterns.
Also watch for tiny referral transfers that tie multiple wallets together.
Taken together, those patterns paint a clear picture.
