Monero Block Explorer: How to Check a Transaction and Prove a Payment (Including After a Swap)

Last updated: 30 October 2026

Quick answer

A Monero block explorer confirms that a transaction exists, which block included it, and how many confirmations it has. It cannot show the sender, receiver, or amount because Monero hides those fields by design. To see whether XMR has arrived, use a fully synced wallet, not the explorer. To prove you sent a payment, share three things: the transaction ID, the recipient address, and the transaction key your wallet stores for each outgoing payment. Incoming funds show as a locked balance until 10 confirmations, roughly 20 minutes at Monero’s two-minute block interval.

What a Monero explorer shows, and what it hides

This is the single most common point of confusion. People paste a Monero address into an explorer expecting a balance and get nothing, or they look up a transaction and see no amount. Both are the protocol working as intended. The explorer answers one question well: is this transaction in the chain, and how deep?

Which explorers to use

• xmrchain.net is the long-running public instance of the open-source onion-monero-blockchain-explorer. It supports transaction lookup and payment-proof checks.
• Blockchair covers Monero alongside other chains and is useful for a quick confirmation count.
• Your own node. The explorer software is open source, so anyone can run an instance against a local monerod for maximum privacy.

Whichever you use, the explorer only ever sees what the chain publishes. Entering a transaction key into a payment-proof form reveals the amount of that one transaction to that explorer’s operator, so use a trusted instance or your own.

How to check an incoming transaction after a swap

1. Get the transaction hash. A swap service or exchange shows the outgoing hash on the order page once it has sent your XMR. On SimpleSwap, every order has a unique ID and a tracking page that moves through deposit, exchange, and sending statuses.
2. Look up the hash. Paste it into the explorer. If it appears, note the block height and confirmations. If it does not appear yet, see the next section.
3. Check that your wallet is synced. Compare the wallet’s block height with the network height shown on the explorer’s front page. A wallet that is behind will not show the transaction, whatever the explorer says. The official Monero wallet guides make the same point: balances are only reliable once the wallet has caught up with the network.
4. Wait for the balance to unlock. Monero wallets show two numbers. Balance is everything the wallet has seen; unlocked balance is what you can spend now. Newly received transactions require 10 confirmations before they unlock, according to the official Monero wallet guide, which works out to about 20 minutes at two-minute blocks.
5. If you restored the wallet from a seed, check the restore height. A wallet restored with a height later than the transaction will never scan the block that contains it. Set the restore height to a date before the payment and rescan.

Why the explorer shows nothing yet

A freshly broadcast transaction first travels through Monero’s Dandelion++ propagation scheme before it lands in public mempools. A Monero GUI maintainer noted on the project’s GitHub that a transaction can take anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes to show up in the mempool depending on how that process goes. Once mined, it appears with one confirmation, and the count rises by one with every new block.

If a transaction still does not appear after a reasonable wait, go back to the sender. In the case of a swap, that means the service’s support with your order ID; for an exchange withdrawal, their support with the withdrawal reference. Do not infer from one explorer alone that the transaction was never broadcast: an explorer may lag, or a broadcast transaction may remain unmined and later drop from mempools. Check more than one source or your own node when possible.

How to prove you sent a payment

Because the chain hides amounts and recipients, Monero has a dedicated mechanism for showing a specific payment to a specific party. You provide three values:

1. The transaction ID (hash).
2. The recipient’s address.
3. The transaction key, a one-time secret generated by your wallet for that payment.

In the Monero GUI, open the History tab, select the transaction, and use the payment proof option; the CLI command is get_tx_key followed by the transaction ID. The recipient or a third party then runs check_tx_key with those three values, or uses the payment-proof form on an explorer such as xmrchain.net to confirm the amount delivered to that address.

Two cautions. The CLI only saves transaction keys if store-tx-info is enabled; make sure it is before you rely on proofs. And a blockchain rescan can discard information the chain itself does not hold, including transaction keys and destination addresses, so export a proof before you rescan if you expect to need it.

A transaction key, when combined with the transaction ID and recipient address, can be used to verify the amount delivered to that recipient in that transaction. It does not reveal your wallet balance or a general history of your other payments, but it should still be shared only when a payment proof is needed.

View key vs transaction key

A private view key lets another party see incoming transactions to your wallet. It cannot spend funds, and it does not reliably show outgoing payments. People share view keys with accountants or auditors who need a read-only picture of what arrived.

A transaction key covers exactly one outgoing payment. It is the right tool for a dispute with a merchant or a swap service.

Your seed phrase and spend key are different again: they control the money. No swap service, exchange, or support agent needs them. SimpleSwap never asks for private keys, and neither should anyone else.

Integrated addresses and payment IDs

Some services use an integrated Monero address, which embeds an encrypted 8-byte payment ID so the recipient can associate a payment with an account or invoice; other services use a unique subaddress instead. Standalone long payment IDs were removed from Monero’s core wallet in v0.15. If a receiving service explicitly supplies an integrated address or other deposit identifier, use exactly the details it provides; otherwise, the payment may require manual recovery by the service’s support team.

Where SimpleSwap fits

When XMR is the asset you receive, SimpleSwap sends it to the address you enter and shows the order status on the tracking page. Most crypto-to-crypto swaps need no account. The service fee is built into the quoted rate; details are available on the website. Network fees go to the Monero network. KYC may be required for transaction security and compliance, and availability is subject to the Terms of Service and jurisdictional restrictions. The only official domain is simpleswap.io.

Rick Cramer, Head of Analytics at SimpleSwap, put the standard for infrastructure this way in the CryptoSlate guide on self-custody: “Boring is the highest compliment you can pay infrastructure. Boring means it worked.” A Monero transaction that confirms quietly while you wait for the unlock is exactly that kind of boring.

Sources

• Monero: How to prove a payment was made
• Monero: Guide for the Monero CLI wallet
• Monero GUI issue tracker: transaction propagation discussion
• CryptoSlate: Self-custody in 2026 (source of the quote)

Related reading

• Is Monero Traceable or Truly Private?
• Best Monero Wallets
• Best Ways to Swap XMR Without a CEX Account in 2026
• Monero on SimpleSwap