MXC Case Study: Customizing Blockscout

Imagine you’re walking your dog Scout through the neighborhood, and at regular intervals a tiny device on Scout’s collar sends a message to a nearby external receiver. 

The message sent to the receiver is then written to a blockchain as a transaction. It contains data that not only proves Scout’s location during the walk, but also confirms the location and functionality of the external receiver. 

For your efforts (and Scout’s), you receive a small reward for sending and confirming proof of location, and the individual running the receiver also receives a reward for collecting the data.

This is one of many use cases envisioned by the MXC chain, a blockchain focusing on decentralized IoT (Internet of Things) technology. MXC has been active on the Polkadot ecosystem since 2018, however after finding a lack of supporting infrastructure, MXC recently moved from Polkadot to Arbitrum as a zkEVM rollup. The network now has access to many more tools and applications, including the latest version of the Blockscout explorer.

MXC & Blockscout

MXC is using Blockscout in unique ways, and they’ve added customizations to support their IoT network functionality.

When an individual registers a receiver for the LPWAN (Low-Power Wide Area Network), this transaction is sent to the blockchain along with the reported location of the receiver. The receiver is meant to cover a certain area - approximately 2km in radius. This area is represented by a hexagon overlaid on a map. 

MXC integrated this hexagon map into Blockscout to show areas with registered receiver coverage.

The map is incorporated into the menu and embedded through an iframe, and can be scaled to show global coverage. Currently there are over 63K devices connected to the global network.

When scaling down into a certain area, clicking on the hexagon (1) reveals information including the transaction where the hexagon was created and (2) devices registered within this hexagon location. 

Transactions can be clicked through to reveal transaction details directly on the MXC Blockscout explorer.

MXC decided to incorporate the Mapper directly into Blockscout to provide convenience and utility to users. It makes sense that the same place with information on transactions should also include the Mapper visualization.

Fortunately, the new Blockscout UI made these customizations easy. With the new React front-end, projects are able to add look and feel updates as well as new functionality using tools they are already familiar with.

Future Directions

MXC is continuing to develop their LPWAN network of decentralized IoT devices. This narrow-band network provides a powerful, real-world use case for decentralized devices. Their wireless radio network uses Solidity and end-to-end encrypted radio hardware, providing a community-powered blockchain network that is extremely resilient to censorship.

As the network and use-cases grow, MXC plans to explore additional visualizations they can add to Blockscout, including ways to incorporate devices in motion as they access the network of receivers, and ways to support NFT visualizations for real-world tokenized items. 

About MXC

MXC is empowering the largest web3 infrastructure layer the world has ever known. MXC's mission is to bring real world asset collateralization to Web3 by enabling real world objects to be bridged with the metaverse and Decentralized Finance (DeFi) protocols.