How to Read a Block on a Block Explorer
Home › Guides · By BscScan.Support Editorial · 4 min read · Updated July 2026
A blockchain is exactly what the name says: a chain of blocks, each one a sealed batch of transactions. Opening a block on an explorer shows you one link of that chain in full detail. Here's what each field means.
Block height
The block's position in the chain, counting from block 0 at launch. Height is the chain's clock: block 110,000,000 happened before 110,000,001, always. When people say "the transaction was included at block X," this is the number they mean.
Timestamp and block time
The moment the validator sealed the block. On BNB Smart Chain a new block arrives roughly every 0.75 seconds — among the fastest of major chains — which is why transactions confirm almost instantly compared to Bitcoin's ten minutes.
Validated by
BSC uses Proof of Staked Authority: a rotating set of validators takes turns producing blocks. This field names the validator that built this one and collected its fees. Anyone can click through to see that validator's address and activity.
Gas used and gas limit
The limit is the block's total capacity for work; gas used is how much of it this block consumed. The utilization percentage tells you how busy the network was at that moment — consistently full blocks mean fee pressure, mostly-empty blocks mean cheap transactions.
Hash and parent hash
The hash is the block's fingerprint, computed from everything inside it. The parent hash is the fingerprint of the previous block — and this is the trick that makes blockchains tamper-evident. Because each block embeds its parent's hash, changing any old transaction would change that block's hash, which would break the next block's parent reference, and so on up the entire chain. You cannot quietly rewrite history; you'd have to rebuild everything after it.
Try it: open our Blocks page, click the newest block, then follow the parent hash backwards through the chain yourself.
Frequently asked questions
What happens if two validators produce a block at once?
Short-lived forks occasionally occur and resolve within seconds as the network converges on one chain; the abandoned block's transactions return to pending. This is why services wait for several confirmations.
Why is block time on BSC so much faster than Bitcoin?
Different consensus designs. BSC's Proof of Staked Authority uses a small, known validator set that takes turns, allowing sub-second blocks; Bitcoin's proof-of-work targets ten minutes by design.