What Is and How to Get the "First" Transaction of a Crypto Wallet Address?
What Is and How to Get the "First" Transaction of a Crypto Wallet Address?
If you are a data analyst on blockchain or an AML expert on crypto, or you want to determine the risk of trading, this is a right artical for you, and please read CAREFULLY, and welcome feedback.
Overview
Let's have a quick glanch on the transaction count of each blockchain. There are 950 million transactions on Bitcoin, there are 2.23 billion transactions on Ethereum, and there are 7 billion transactions on Tron. Well, how to efficiently get them all analyzed clearly and accurately? This is really a big question for analyst to face to resolve, and even harder in the future as the transactions are becoming more frequency and more complex.
What is the "FIRST" txn of crypto wallet address?
There are bunch of transations happened on address, the "FIRST" txn is the first time the address received or sent assets on blockchains. Usually the first asset the address received is critical as it represents the owner's raw intention. Who sent what, and when, and how much.
In the following scenarios, you will understand why the "FIRST" txn is so important.
As an auditor, you care about each transaction, from first to end to avoid omission; As a security tracker, you care about the first time, the first counterparty and the amount of assets in the first transaction; As a marketing investigator, you care about the staking, the rewards to exactly know the profit; As a quantitative trader, you care about the trading frequency, the start trading transaction and the interacted contract.
Yes, from the above, you can see the first transaction is an important role whatever you do any analysis. Huge blockchain data is a kaleidoscope. Everything in blockchain is transparent, that could be put together and be extracted, and we will get the real truth at the eventual end with the first transaction's help.
Supposing you are a crypto security tracker or fraud engineer, your client gave you an ethereum address 0xdc1648, and told you this address was involved in one money laundering case. The address is the key source of the case. Now, your client expects you to give an illustrative report which tells the exact clues.
What will you DO? Not only these, but firstly.
- Who owns this address?
- When is the transfer initiated?
- Who sent the transfer fee that makes the transaction on chain successfully?
- Who is the first counterparty of this address?
- How much ETHs were traded in the beginning?
- ...
All you are thinking about is the "FIRST" transaction. The first normal transaction, the first call transaction, the first token transaction, these "FIRST" transactions will give you the clear image of the first day on this address. Let's say,
- The FIRST token transaction will tell you address 0xdc1648 received 10,000 Tether USDT from 0x0098es on 10/04/2016.
- The first normal transaction will tell you address 0xdc1648 received 0.01 ETH from 0x39pdfe on 10/05/2016.
- The first token sent transaction will tell you address 0xdc1648 sent 10,000 Tether USDT to 0xqqkl2s on 10/08/2016, charged 0.003 ETH as transfer fee.
From these transactions, you may know 0x39pdfe is a key address, because normally "the exact charging fee sender" should be very close to the address owner. 0x39pdfe will be an important clue in your report. Yes, this is the prominent role of the "FIRST" txn, it is the "key" transaction to give more information for your next investigation.
HOW and WHERE to get the "FIRST" txn of address?
Feeling the powerful functions and magic of the first transaction? Having the first transaction makes everything easy to track, to expose, they will make up for the source defect. I believe you've found the "FIRST" transaction is very important for many valuable data analysis in your analyzing experiences.
Then where can you find them?
- Of course, as an individual, you can find them from each blockchain explorer, generally like blockchair.com, tokenview.io.
- Secondly, as a programmer, you can find them from general APIs provided by each blockchain explorer. But as I know, there is no such general APIs provided specially for FIRST Txn series yet in most blockchain explorers.
- Thirdly, as a senior analyst, you could contact each blockchain data provider to customize this data.
Tokenview, a general blockchain explorer, is one of a blockchain data provider as well. Per the requests of tokenviewers, they will launch a new API series, "FIRST TXN", including 7 APIs:
- First normal sent transaction;
- First normal received transaction;
- First call sent transaction;
- First call received transaction;
- First token sent transaction;
- First token received transaction;
- First rewarded block;
Keep an eye on their notifications if these APIs are useful to you.
Conclusion
Blockchain is a transparent network where everyone can trade without any limitation. Billions of transactions might hide the "FIRST TXN" transparency on huge addresses due to the performance considerations of data providers, meanwhile these data will be exposed as APIs to help generating more valuable analytical data to individuals then.
Do not hesitate to contact any of the blockchain data providers to do customization to improve WEB3 building, and sharing among blockchain crypto world.