What is BscScan and what is it used for?

BscScan is a block explorer for BNB Smart Chain, the network often labeled BSC or BEP20 on exchanges. You paste in a transaction hash, address, token or block and see the public record. It is a separate service from the chain, so it can display data but cannot move or recover funds.

What does BscScan do?

The BNB Chain blog describes BscScan as developed by the team behind Etherscan and other EVM explorers, and Cointelegraph says it launched in 2020. Its main features, as of November 2026, are:

• Transaction tracking. Status, sender, recipient, amount and fee for any BSC transaction.
• Address pages. An address's BNB balance, token holdings and history.
• Token pages. Data on BEP-20 tokens and BEP-721 NFTs, including holder distribution and contract details.
• Validators and gas. Information on BSC validators and a real-time gas tracker.
• An API. Developers can sign up for a key and pull transaction, balance and contract data into their own apps.

The BNB Chain blog also points to a separate BscScan site for opBNB, BNB Chain's layer 2. MetaMask's support pages suggest checking the explorer that matches the network a transfer used, such as BscScan for BSC. Our guide on how to use a blockchain explorer covers the basic lookup steps.

What is token holdings in BscScan?

Token Holdings is the part of an address page that lists the BEP-20 tokens held at that address and the amount of each. Cointelegraph notes that wallet pages show these tokens and their quantities, while each token's own page shows wider data.

Two cautions apply. First, BSC addresses use the same 0x format as Ethereum, so the same address can hold different tokens on each chain. Our guide to BEP20 explains why that causes mix-ups. Second, anyone can send tokens to any address. Unknown tokens in your holdings may be spam meant to lure you to a scam site, a pattern described in what a dusting attack is.

What is a BSC contract?

A BSC contract is a smart contract deployed on BNB Smart Chain. Every BEP-20 token is one. BNB Chain's docs say BEP-20 extends Ethereum's ERC-20 standard, with functions such as totalSupply, balanceOf, transfer and approve.

On BscScan, a contract address has its own page. Cointelegraph says users can read and interact with contracts from the site without developer tools, and developers can submit source code for verification. Etherscan, which built BscScan, warns on its own explorer that a verified contract is not necessarily safe or audited. Writing to a contract means signing a real transaction from your wallet, which costs gas and usually cannot be undone.

How do you check a contract address on BscScan?

Search the contract address, then compare it with the one published by the project's official channels. Many tokens share names, so the token contract address is the reliable identifier. Check that the token page shows the expected name, that the contract is verified, and that you typed bscscan.com yourself rather than following a link. Etherscan's safety guide also suggests checking name tags and third-party token reputation cards before signing anything.