eth_getBlockTransactionCountByNumber | Ethereum

Ethereum API method that returns the number of transactions in a block specified by block number or tag. This information can be useful for analytics purposes.

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Parameters

• quantity or tag — the integer of a block encoded as hexadecimal or the string with:

  • latest — the most recent block in the blockchain and the current state of the blockchain at the most recent block. A chain reorganization is to be expected.
  • safe — the block that received justification from the beacon chain. Although this block could be involved in a chain reorganization, it would necessitate either a coordinated attack by the majority of validators or an instance of severe propagation latency.
  • finalized — the block accepted as canonical by more than 2/3 of the validators. A chain reorganization is extremely unlikely, and it would require at least 1/3 of the staked ETH to be burned.
  • earliest — the earliest available or genesis block
  • pending — the pending state and transactions block. The current state of transactions that have been broadcast to the network but have not yet been included in a block.

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Response

• quantity — an integer value representing how many transactions are included in the block.

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eth_getBlockTransactionCountByNumber code examples

const ethers = require("ethers");



// Create a ChainstackProvider instance for Ethereum mainnet

const chainstack = new ethers.ChainstackProvider("mainnet");



const getTransactionsCount = async (blockId) => {

  const count = await chainstack.send("eth_getBlockTransactionCountByNumber", [

    blockId,

  ]);

  console.log(count);

};



getTransactionsCount("0x1026220");

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Use case

eth_getBlockTransactionCountByNumber can be used to analyze how many transactions are included on the Ethereum blockchain in a certain period. For instance, a new block is generated on the Ethereum blockchain every 12 seconds, resulting in approximately 300 blocks per hour. Using the ethers.js library, one can inspect the past 300 blocks starting from the latest block and use eth_getBlockTransactionCountByNumber to find the number of transactions in each block to sum them.

const ethers = require('ethers');

const NODE_URL = "CHAINSTACK_NODE_URL";

const provider = new ethers.JsonRpcProvider(NODE_URL);



async function retrieveTransactionCounts() {

    // Get the current block number

    const currentBlockNumber = await provider.getBlockNumber();

  

    // Calculate the block number from one hour ago

    const oneHourAgoBlockNumber = currentBlockNumber - 300; // 300/blocks/hr on average on the Ethereum  mainnet

  

    // Initialize a variable to store the total number of transactions

    let totalTransactionCount = 0;

  

    // Loop through all blocks from the current block number to the block number from one hour ago

    for (let block = currentBlockNumber; block > oneHourAgoBlockNumber; block--) {

  

      // Get the number of transactions in this block

      const transactionCount = await provider.send("eth_getBlockTransactionCountByNumber", [block]);



      // Make the necessery conversions from hex to decimal

      const stringCount = BigInt(transactionCount).toString();

      const decimalCount = Number(stringCount)



      // Add the number of transactions in this block to the total

      totalTransactionCount += decimalCount;



      const stringBlock = BigInt(block).toString();

      const decimalBlock = Number(stringBlock)

      console.log(`Block ${decimalBlock} has ${decimalCount} transactions.`);

    }

  

    console.log(`The total number of transactions in the previous hour is: ${totalTransactionCount}`);

  }

  

  retrieveTransactionCounts();

Using eth_getBlockTransactionCountByNumber is a bit more straightforward compared to the example shown using eth_getBlockTransactionCountByHash for this same use case, you don’t need to extract the block hash. Instead, you can query the transaction count directly.

This example is made using the ethers.js library, and you can notice that it requires more parsing compared to web3.js, and the results are given as hexadecimal.