How to read a block explorer
An explorer tells you the truth about any transfer. What each field on the page means, and which ones actually matter when you are checking a deposit.
A block explorer is a public window onto a blockchain. Tronscan, Etherscan and mempool.space all do the same job for their own chain: you give them an address or a transaction ID and they show you what the network recorded.
This matters because it is independent. You are not taking a wallet's word for anything — you are reading the ledger that every participant agrees on.
The fields worth reading
Status. Success, pending or failed. This is the only field that answers "did it go through".
Block and confirmations. Which block included it and how many blocks have been built on top. More confirmations means more settled.
From and To. The sending and receiving addresses. Check the To field against the address you were given — this is where a wrong-address mistake becomes visible.
Value and token. On a token transfer, the value at the top may show zero because no native coin moved. The actual amount appears in a token-transfer row further down. People read the zero and panic unnecessarily.
Fee. What the transfer cost. On a failed Ethereum transaction this can be non-zero, because you pay for the attempt.
Timestamp. When the network saw it, which settles arguments about whether something was sent before a deadline.
Looking up an address instead
Paste an address and you get its whole history: every transfer in and out, and the current balance. Nothing is hidden, which is worth sitting with — a blockchain is public by design, not private.
For checking a deposit, the address view is useful for one thing in particular: confirming funds actually arrived at the address you were given, rather than merely that a transaction exists somewhere.
What an explorer cannot tell you
Who owns an address. Addresses are not names. An explorer shows that funds moved, never who moved them.
Whether a transfer was a mistake. A payment to the wrong person looks exactly like a payment to the right one.
Whether a service has credited you. That is the service's own bookkeeping, which happens after the chain confirms. A confirmed transfer plus an uncredited balance is the one case to raise with support.