Asked and answered.
What Flow covers, how clusters and labels work, what an account is for, and what keeps the free tier free. If yours is missing, tell us.
Getting started
What is Flow?
A modern explorer for the whole Bitcoin chain. Open any address or transaction, see the cluster it belongs to, follow where value went and where it came from, follow an inscription hop by hop, and see the names the community has attached along the way. It runs in a browser; nothing to install.
Do I need an account?
Not to look. Anything someone has published opens for anyone with the link, read-only. Tracing, saving graphs, publishing links and voting on labels need an account, because a published graph and a cast vote need an author with a track record behind them. Accounts are free, and an alias is fine.
What is a lookup, and how does the daily limit work?
A lookup is one cluster, once a day. Open it, switch tabs, expand it, come back that evening — still one lookup. Counters reset at midnight UTC, and the usage meter in your account shows where you stand. The limits exist to keep the free tiers fast for everyone, not to meter curiosity.
Is there a tutorial?
Yes. The first time you open Flow, a short tour points out the search, the canvas, the toolbox and the guide. You can replay it any time from the Guide.
Can I share what I found?
Every saved graph can be published as a link. Viewers see the trace exactly as you left it, labels and notes included, with no account. Image exports carry a small followthesats.com mark.
Is there scheduled maintenance, and do you guarantee uptime?
We reserve a weekly maintenance window, announced in News inside the app. During the beta there is no uptime guarantee: we are actively developing Flow and push fixes continuously, so expect short interruptions now and then. Saved graphs and published links are not affected by maintenance.
Data & coverage
How much of the chain does Flow cover?
All of it, from the genesis block to the current tip: every address that has ever appeared, clustered, with the data refreshed nightly. No sampling, no “contact sales for full history”.
What is a cluster?
A set of addresses that, with high likelihood, share an owner. Co-spending in one transaction is the strongest signal, and other heuristics refine it. Flow resolves 1.5 billion addresses into these clusters so a wallet reads as one thing rather than a thousand addresses. CoinJoins are recognised and kept from merging strangers.
Can clustering be wrong?
Yes. Co-spend and the other heuristics are exactly that, heuristics, and heuristics have edge cases: custodial services, coordinated wallets, unusual scripts. That is why every name on a cluster is shown as a hypothesis with a confidence, why disputes stay visible, and why Flow is evidence to weigh, never a verdict.
Where does the data come from?
Our own full node and our own engine. No third-party data vendor sits between the chain and what you see.
Do you plan to support other chains?
Maybe. We’ll see. :) It depends on what the Flow Team decides. Today Flow is Bitcoin, and ordinals and runes live on Bitcoin, so they are covered.
Is there an API?
Enterprise accounts get a metered API for clusters and flows, and bulk export of their own traces. The label corpus itself is not exported at any tier.
Ordinals & on-chain messages
What can I see about an inscription?
Which cluster holds it now, every hand it passed through to get there, and the content itself — the image, the video or the plain-words meaning — when you expand a row. A single move or an inscription’s entire history can be added to the canvas.
What about OP_RETURN and runes?
OP_RETURN messages and runestones are decoded on every transfer today. Runes as their own layer on the canvas are coming soon.
Do you plan to support other digital assets on the Bitcoin blockchain, such as BRC-20?
Likely. Ordinals are here and runes are next; the rest of what lives on Bitcoin is on the list.
Labels & attribution
What does the ≈ in front of a name mean?
That the name is a hypothesis. Every label carries a confidence — ≈ Coinbase · strong is a different claim from ≈ Coinbase · weak — and the sign never comes off.
Where do labels come from?
Two places. Platform labels are imported from published, citable facts — an exchange’s own proof-of-reserves file, an official list. Community labels come from members: you say who a wallet belongs to, you show your source, others weigh in, and a curator signs off before the name renders.
How do I propose a label?
Open a cluster, choose Identify this entity, type the name, paste the source. A label without a source goes nowhere.
How are votes weighted?
By track record. Being right, repeatedly, in the open earns weight; volume does not, and money never does. A paid account votes with exactly the weight its history has earned.
Can I dispute a label?
Yes. Vote against it with your reasoning and a source. Disputes are visible on the cluster, and labels that lose their support expire.
Do labels ever name people?
No. Labels describe wallets and services — an exchange, a mining pool, a marketplace. Naming a private individual is against the rules and ends participation.
Can I download the list of labels?
No, at any tier. Labels are found by tracing, one cluster at a time. There is no browsable or exportable corpus.
Accounts & privacy
What do you track?
No ads, no trackers, no analytics scripts, no data sales — on this site or in the app. Like any web service, our servers keep operational logs to fight abuse, keep the service fast and compute statistics such as leaderboards. The privacy policy has the details.
Can I stay pseudonymous?
Yes. An account is an email address for the sign-in code and an alias. We are anonymous ourselves.
Why do I get a code by email when I sign in?
Sign-in is your password plus a one-time code sent to your email. Sessions last seven days, and each account has one active session at a time; signing in somewhere new signs the old one out.
How do I delete my account?
Write to privacy@followthesats.com from the address on the account.
Pricing & sustainability
Will the free tier stay free?
Yes. Forever. Free public access is the founding commitment of this project, and the paid tiers exist precisely so it never has to change. If the economics ever forced a choice, the paywall loses — not the public.
What is Supporter, and why is it free right now?
Supporter adds indirect exposure, Nearest, Roles, AutoTrace and a higher daily limit. Flow is in beta, so every new account gets it at no charge; a price comes later, with notice.
What does Enterprise include?
Source citations behind every label, a metered API, bulk export of your traces, org workspaces with shared private notes, onboarding with the builders, and lookup volume sized to the team. Open a conversation.
Does paying affect labels?
Never. Money never buys attribution influence: no tier grants label weight, curator status, or visibility into data the public can’t see. This is doctrine.
Who pays for Flow?
No foundation. Bitcoin has none, and neither do we. Enterprise customers fund the machine; the public uses it. How the tiers work.