How to Read a TON Transaction on Tonviewer or Tonscan

To read a TON transaction, paste your wallet address or the transaction hash into a TON block explorer such as Tonviewer or Tonscan, open the transaction, and check four things: who sent it, who received it, what moved (TON, a token or an NFT) and whether it succeeded. Most confusion comes from the fact that one action in your wallet creates several linked transactions on TON, and from addresses that look different but belong to the same account.

This guide walks through each part of an explorer page, explains the TON-specific details that trip people up, and shows how to use an explorer to settle the questions people actually have: did my payment arrive, why did it bounce, and is this token real. It is explanatory only and is not investment or financial advice.

What a block explorer is and why you would use one

A block explorer is a website that reads the public TON blockchain and shows it in a readable form. It does not hold your money and cannot move it. It is a window onto data that anyone can see.

People open an explorer for a handful of reasons:

• To confirm a payment was sent or received, independently of what a wallet app or another person says.
• To find out why a transfer failed or came back.
• To check that an exchange deposit reached the right address with the right comment.
• To look up a token or NFT before accepting or buying it.
• To give a support team the exact transaction they need to investigate.

Tonviewer and Tonscan are two widely used explorers for TON. They read the same blockchain, so the underlying facts are identical. They differ in layout and in how much they summarise. If one view confuses you, opening the same transaction in the other is often the quickest way to make sense of it.

Before you start

1. Have the right identifier. Either your wallet address, the other party's address, or the transaction hash. Most wallets have a "view in explorer" option on a transaction's detail screen, which opens it directly.
2. Use the explorer's real address. Type it yourself or use a bookmark. Fake explorer sites exist, and a scammer can send you a link to one showing a payment that never happened.
3. Know which network you are on. TON has a main network and a test network for developers. Testnet addresses and transactions are not real money and appear in separate explorer views.
4. Know whether your wallet is custodial. A custodial wallet inside a service or exchange may not use an address that belongs only to you. More on that below, because it changes what you will find.

How TON transactions differ from other blockchains

If you have used other blockchains, one thing about TON will surprise you. On TON, every account is a smart contract, including your wallet, and contracts talk to each other by sending messages. A transaction is what happens when one account processes one incoming message.

That has a visible consequence. A single tap in your wallet often produces a chain:

1. Your wallet contract receives your signed request and sends a message onward.
2. The next contract receives that message and runs its own transaction.
3. That contract may send further messages, and each one creates another transaction.
4. Leftover funds for fees are often returned to you as a final small message.

Explorers group this chain together and show it as one action, often called an event or a trace. Underneath, there are several transactions, each with its own hash. When a support team asks for "the transaction hash", ask which one they need, or give them the link to the whole event.

Why this design matters to you

Because the steps happen one after another, a transfer can partly succeed. The first step can complete, taking fees from your wallet, while a later step fails. The explorer shows exactly where the chain stopped. That is the key to understanding most failed or bounced transfers.

Understanding TON addresses

Addresses are the most common source of confusion, so it is worth getting them clear first.

One account, several spellings

The same TON account can be written in several forms:

• Raw form. A workchain number, a colon, and a long hexadecimal string. This is the form developers see.
• User-friendly form. A shorter string of letters, digits and a few symbols. This is the form wallets show.

The user-friendly form itself comes in variants. A flag inside it marks whether the address is bounceable or non-bounceable, and another marks whether it is for the test network. On the main network, bounceable addresses commonly start with the letters EQ and non-bounceable ones with UQ. These are the same account written two ways.

So if your wallet shows an address starting UQ and the explorer shows one starting EQ, do not panic. Open the address in the explorer and check that it leads to the same account and the same balance. Explorers usually let you switch between forms on the address page.

What bounceable means

The bounceable flag tells the receiving side what to do if something goes wrong. If a transfer is sent as bounceable and the receiving contract cannot process it, the funds are sent back, minus fees. If it is non-bounceable, the funds stay at the destination even if nothing there can use them.

This is why wallets normally use the non-bounceable form for personal wallet addresses. A brand-new wallet that has never sent anything is not yet deployed on the blockchain. A bounceable transfer to it would bounce straight back, because there is no contract there yet to accept it. A non-bounceable transfer lands and waits until the owner first uses the wallet.

Account states you will see

An address page usually shows a state:

• Active. The contract is deployed and working. Most wallets that have sent at least once are active.
• Uninitialised or not deployed. The address has received funds but has no contract code yet. This is normal for a new wallet. It becomes active the first time the owner sends something.
• Frozen. Rare. The account ran out of funds to pay storage fees for a long time. If you see this on your own wallet, contact your wallet's support.
• Nonexistent. Nothing has ever been sent to this address.

Reading an address page

Before you open a single transaction, the address page itself answers several questions.

• Balance. The TON the account holds right now. If it matches what your wallet app shows, you are looking at the right account.
• Tokens. A separate list of jettons the account holds, each with the amount. Unknown tokens you never bought often appear here; more on those below.
• Collectibles. NFTs the account owns, such as collectible usernames or numbers bought on Fragment.
• History. Every transaction involving the account, newest first. Some explorers let you filter by type, which helps on a busy address.
• Contract type. Often shown as a wallet version or a contract name. Different wallet apps deploy different wallet contract versions. If a wallet app shows you a different address after an update or on another device, the cause is usually a different wallet version created from the same recovery phrase, and your funds sit on whichever version received them.

That last point resolves a common scare. If you restore your recovery phrase in a new app and see a zero balance, check whether the app chose a different wallet version. Many apps let you switch versions or show all of them.

Finding your transaction

There are three ways in, depending on what you have.

From your wallet

1. Open the transaction in your wallet app's history.
2. Look for an option to view it in an explorer. Many wallets offer one.
3. Confirm the address bar shows the explorer you expected before you trust what you see.

From an address

1. Copy your wallet address from your wallet app.
2. Paste it into the explorer's search box.
3. Open the address page and find the transaction list, newest first.
4. Match the transaction by time, amount and the other party's address.

From a transaction hash

1. Copy the hash from your wallet or from whoever sent it.
2. Paste it into the explorer's search box.
3. If the hash is for one step of a longer chain, the explorer may open that step. Look for a link to the full event or trace.

If you cannot find a transaction that a wallet says it sent, wait a moment and refresh. TON confirms transactions quickly, usually within seconds, but an explorer's index can lag slightly behind the chain.

Reading the parts of a transaction page

Explorer layouts change over time, but the same pieces of information appear on every transaction page.

Status

The most important field. A transaction can succeed, fail, or succeed at one step and fail at a later one. Look for a clear success or failure indicator, and in a multi-step event, check the status of every step, not only the first.

Time and logical time

The time is the human-readable moment the transaction happened. Logical time is a counter TON uses to order transactions on an account. You only need it if a developer or support team asks for it.

Sender and receiver

Each step shows which account sent the incoming message and which account processed it. In a simple TON transfer, the sender is your wallet and the receiver is the other wallet. In a token transfer, the accounts in the middle are contracts, not people. Explorers often show a name or label next to well-known addresses, such as a known exchange or service. Treat a label as a convenience, not as proof.

Amount

The amount of TON carried by the message. In a token transfer, the TON amount is usually small: it pays for the token contracts to do their work, and most of it comes back. The token amount appears separately.

Fees

TON charges fees for computation, for storing data and for forwarding messages. The explorer shows the total, and some views break it down. Fees on TON are normally a small fraction of a TON, but they vary with what the transaction does. A token or NFT transfer costs more than a plain TON transfer because more contracts run.

Comment

A text comment attached to a transfer. This is where exchanges ask for a deposit memo, and where people write notes like "rent March". The comment is public: anyone can read it on the explorer. Our guide to TON memos and comments explains when a comment is required and what happens if you forget it.

Hash

The unique identifier of this transaction. Copy it when you contact support. Hashes are long, so copy them rather than typing them.

Reading the common kinds of transfer

A plain TON transfer

You will see one main step: your wallet sends TON to the other address. The receiver gets the amount, and your wallet pays a fee on top. If the destination was a new wallet, its state may change from nonexistent to uninitialised.

What to check:

1. The receiver address matches the one you meant to pay. Compare the first and last several characters at least.
2. The amount is what you expected.
3. The status is success.
4. The comment is present if the recipient needed one.

A token (jetton) transfer

Tokens on TON are called jettons. USDT on TON is one example. A jetton transfer looks more complicated because of how jettons work: every holder has their own small jetton wallet contract for each token, separate from their main wallet.

A typical chain looks like this:

1. Your main wallet sends a message to your jetton wallet for that token.
2. Your jetton wallet sends the tokens to the recipient's jetton wallet.
3. The recipient's jetton wallet credits the tokens and may notify the recipient's main wallet.
4. Leftover TON from the fee allowance returns to your main wallet.

The explorer usually summarises this as "sent X tokens to address Y". If you open the trace, you will see the separate steps. Our explainer on what jettons are covers the model in more depth, and USDT on TON covers the most used one.

What to check:

1. The token's name and, more importantly, its master contract. Anyone can create a token called USDT; only one master contract is the real one.
2. The recipient is the person's main wallet, not a jetton wallet address. Explorers usually show the owner.
3. Every step in the chain succeeded, especially the step where the recipient's jetton wallet credits the tokens.

An NFT transfer

An NFT, such as a collectible username or a digital collectible, is its own contract. Transferring it means its owner field changes. The explorer shows the NFT, the old owner and the new owner. A small amount of TON travels with the transfer to pay for the work, and part of it may be passed to the new owner as a notification.

A swap or a contract interaction

When you use a decentralised exchange or another app, your wallet sends a message to that app's contracts, which then send further messages. The chain can be long. Explorers summarise the result, such as "swapped A for B". If something went wrong, look for the first step marked as failed and read the reason shown there.

When a transaction fails or bounces

How to recognise a failure

The explorer marks the step that failed. You may see a short reason or an exit code, which is a number the contract returned. You do not need to know every code. What matters is where in the chain it failed and whether your funds came back.

Bounced transfers

How to recognise it: you see your outgoing transfer, then an incoming transfer from the same address shortly after, often marked as a bounce, with a slightly smaller amount.

Why it happens: the destination contract could not accept the message, and the transfer was bounceable, so TON sent it back. The difference is the fees spent on the attempt.

Common causes:

• Sending a bounceable transfer to a wallet that has never been used.
• Sending to a contract that does not accept plain transfers.
• Sending a token transfer with too little TON attached to pay for the contracts.

What to do:

1. Check that the returned amount is in your wallet.
2. Confirm the correct address with the recipient.
3. If the recipient's wallet is new, send using the address form their wallet shows, which is usually non-bounceable.
4. Try again with a small amount first.

Failed with funds not returned

How to recognise it: the chain stops with a failure and there is no return message, or the funds are stuck in a contract.

What to do:

1. Do not send again to the same place until you understand why it failed.
2. Copy the link to the whole event.
3. Contact the support team of the app, exchange or wallet you were using, and send them the link. They can read the failing step.

Explorers cannot reverse transactions and neither can anyone else on the network. Support can only help where funds are sitting in a contract or account that they control.

Your wallet shows "pending" for a long time

How to recognise it: the wallet app says pending, but the explorer shows nothing.

1. Check your internet connection and refresh the wallet.
2. Search for your wallet address on the explorer and look at the newest entries.
3. If nothing appears after a few minutes, the request may never have reached the network. Many wallets then mark it as failed or expired, and no funds move.

Custodial wallets and exchanges: why you may not find "your" transaction

Not every wallet is a personal on-chain wallet. Exchanges and some services keep customers' funds in shared addresses and track balances in their own records. That changes what an explorer can show you.

• Transfers between two customers of the same service may never appear on the blockchain. The service just updates its own ledger.
• Withdrawals arrive from the service's own sending address, not from an address with your name on it.
• Deposits go to the service's address and are matched to your account by the comment or memo. Without the right memo, the funds arrive on-chain but the service may not know they are yours.

The custodial and self-custody parts of the Wallet in Telegram work differently in this respect; our Telegram Wallet guide explains the difference, and Tonkeeper vs Telegram Wallet compares the approaches.

Worked examples

These are made-up examples to show the reasoning. The addresses and amounts are placeholders.

Example: "I paid, check your wallet"

A buyer says they sent you a payment and shows a screenshot. You open your own wallet address in the explorer by typing the explorer's address yourself and pasting your wallet address from your own app. You look for an incoming transfer at the time they mention. There is none. You do not rely on their screenshot or on a link they send. A payment that exists is on the blockchain; a payment that only exists in a screenshot does not. This is one of the most common patterns in crypto scams on Telegram.

Example: an exchange deposit without a memo

Mina sends TON to an exchange but forgets the deposit comment. On the explorer, the transfer is there: correct address, correct amount, success, no comment. The money reached the exchange's address. The fix is not on the blockchain; it is with the exchange's support. She sends them the transaction link and asks them to credit it to her account.

Example: a token that "arrived" but is worthless

Leo sees a large amount of a token called USDT in his wallet that he never bought, with a comment containing a website link. On the explorer, he opens the token and looks at its master contract. It does not match the official one. The token is a fake, airdropped to lure people to a phishing site. He ignores it and does not visit the link.

Example: a bounce to a new wallet

Jon sends TON to his friend's brand-new wallet and sees it come back a moment later, slightly smaller. On the explorer, the destination address is listed as nonexistent, and the transfer was sent in bounceable form. He asks his friend to copy the address again directly from the friend's wallet app, which gives the non-bounceable form, and the next transfer arrives.

What to send a support team

When a transfer goes wrong, the quality of the information you send decides how fast it gets solved. A useful message contains:

1. The link to the whole event on the explorer, not only one step.
2. The sending address and the receiving address, copied, not typed.
3. The amount and the asset: TON, which token, or which NFT.
4. The comment or memo you used, or a note that you used none.
5. The time it happened, with your time zone.
6. What you expected to happen and what happened instead.

What you should never include: your recovery phrase, your wallet password, or a screenshot that shows either. Real support teams can read everything they need from the blockchain and from your account with them. Also be careful who you contact: people who reply to your public complaint in a group offering to "recover" funds are almost always scammers. Reach support only through the app's own help section or official website.

Using the explorer for safety checks

An explorer is one of the best scam-prevention tools you have, because it shows facts that nobody in a chat can fake.

1. Verify payments yourself. Open your own address, typed from your own app, on the explorer's real site. Never trust a screenshot or a link a counterparty sends.
2. Check token contracts. Before accepting a token as payment, compare its master contract with the issuer's official one.
3. Look at an address's history before sending a large amount. A fresh address with no history is not proof of anything, but an address a scam warning names is a red flag.
4. Ignore unsolicited tokens and NFTs. Many carry links in their names or comments. The safest action is to do nothing with them.
5. Remember comments are public. Never write personal details in a transfer comment.
6. Never share your recovery phrase. No explorer, support agent or verification process needs it. Anyone who asks for it is trying to steal your wallet.

If a project's official channel told you to send funds somewhere, also check that the channel is genuine. Our guide to verifying a crypto project's official Telegram shows how.

Common mistakes

• Comparing different address forms character by character. EQ and UQ forms of the same account look different. Open both in the explorer instead.
• Reading only the first step of a multi-step event. A token transfer can succeed at your end and fail later. Check every step.
• Trusting an explorer link someone else sent. Fake explorer pages exist. Type the site address yourself.
• Expecting to see transfers inside an exchange. Internal moves at a custodial service do not touch the blockchain.
• Treating a label as verification. An explorer's name tag on an address is helpful, not a guarantee.
• Judging a token by its name. Only the master contract identifies a token.
• Resending after a failure without reading why. If the cause was a wrong address or too little TON for fees, a second attempt fails the same way and costs another fee.

FAQ

Is Tonviewer or Tonscan better?

Both read the same TON blockchain, so the facts are the same. They differ in layout and in how much they summarise multi-step events. Use whichever you find clearer, and open the other if a page confuses you.

Why does my address look different on the explorer?

TON addresses have several spellings for one account: raw and user-friendly, bounceable and non-bounceable. EQ and UQ prefixes are the same account. Open the address and check the balance and history match your wallet.

Can a TON transaction be cancelled or reversed?

No. Once a transaction is on the blockchain it cannot be undone by you, the explorer or the network. Only the recipient can send funds back. A bounce happens automatically only when the destination could not accept the transfer.

Why did I pay a fee when my transfer failed?

The network did work to process the attempt, and fees pay for that work. When a transfer bounces, the returned amount is the original minus the fees used.

My exchange withdrawal is "sent" but I can't see it. Why?

Look up your own receiving address rather than searching for your name or an exchange order number. The transfer comes from the exchange's sending address. If it is not there after a reasonable time, ask the exchange for the transaction hash.

Does the explorer show who owns an address?

No, not in the sense of a person's identity. It shows the account's activity and sometimes a label for well-known services. An address on its own does not say who controls it.

Summary

To read a TON transaction, open the explorer by typing its address yourself, search for your wallet address or the transaction hash, and check status, sender, receiver, amount, fee and comment. Remember that one action on TON is often a chain of transactions, so read every step, especially for token transfers. Treat EQ and UQ addresses as two spellings of one account, and expect bounces when a bounceable transfer meets a wallet that has never been used. Custodial services keep internal moves off-chain, so search for the deposit or withdrawal itself. Above all, verify payments on the explorer yourself rather than trusting screenshots or links, and never share your recovery phrase. For the wider picture of how TON fits into Telegram, see TON and Telegram explained.