# Reading an address page

> How to make sense of an address page on Quantascan — balance, transactions, and the chain-specific details.

The **address page** is where most explorer journeys end up — you searched a wallet, and now you want to understand what you're looking at. Here's how to read it.

## The essentials

Near the top you'll find the headline facts:

- **Balance** — the address's current holdings, shown in [QRL or Quanta](/learn/units-shor-quanta-planck) depending on the chain.
- **Transaction count** — how many transactions the address has been involved in.
- **Chain** — whether this is a [QRL Legacy or QRL 2.0](/learn/qrl-legacy-vs-qrl2) address. You can also tell from the [length](/learn/qrl-address-formats): 79 characters is Legacy, 41 is QRL 2.0.
- **Label / classification** — if Quantascan recognises the address (an exchange, mining pool, contract, validator, and so on), it's flagged here.

## The transaction history

Below the summary is the address's **transaction history** — the incoming and outgoing transactions, newest first. Each row links to the full [transaction](/learn/blocks-and-transactions) and the counterpart address, so you can trace flows of value step by step.

A couple of QRL-specific things to expect:

- **QRL Legacy** transfers can have **multiple recipients** in one transaction, so a single transaction hash may appear against several addresses.
- **QRL 2.0** addresses may show contract calls, token transfers and NFT activity, since the chain runs [smart contracts](/learn/smart-contracts-on-qrl2).

## Balance without transactions? That's normal

A common surprise: an address with a healthy balance but **very few transactions**. On QRL 2.0 this is expected and benign, for two reasons:

- **Validator withdrawals.** A [validator's](/learn/validators-and-staking) balance grows through protocol [withdrawals](/learn/withdrawals-explained), which aren't ordinary transactions — so the balance climbs without matching transaction rows.
- **Genesis funding.** An address funded in the chain's [starting allocation](/learn/qrl-tokenomics-and-supply) holds a balance from block zero, before any transactions of its own.

So "big balance, little history" usually means a validator or a genesis-funded account, not an anomaly.

## What the page doesn't tell you

An address page describes an **address**, not a person. As with the [richlist](/learn/understanding-the-richlist), one person may control many addresses, and one address (an exchange) may hold funds for many people. The page shows what's on-chain; it can't reveal who's behind it unless the address is labelled.

## Where to go next

- [QRL address formats](/learn/qrl-address-formats) — telling the two chains' addresses apart.
- [Understanding the richlist](/learn/understanding-the-richlist) — addresses ranked by balance.
- [Reading a block explorer](/learn/reading-a-block-explorer) — the wider tour.