Is there a block explorer that allows you to upload a view key and view the transactions associated with it? If the view key is public (such as a donation address's view key), there is no security risk involved with uploading it to that service. You could even imagine a service that keeps track of common public view keys.

Is there such a thing?


To my knowledge, there is no such service. Rescanning the blockchain from scratch takes a good bit of server resources, and is definitely not a few simple lookups.

However, I can think of a way, but one which is discouraged (and I don't feel too bad mentioning it here, since it's a paying service).

Generate a view only wallet using the donation address and view key with simplewallet. Run seed to get the matching seed. Import that seed into MyMonero, and pay the 10 monero fee. Wait a bit for donations to show up.

You won't see spends though, since you do not have the spend key. Also, note that incoming outputs may be either donations, or change from a transaction spent by the donation address, so you won't see the total donated unless that wallet never spent anything.

  • So when i don't see spends, does that mean i don't see any negative balance changes like -50 to unknown address? So the view balance is just keep getting higher and higher? – onefox Aug 25 '16 at 20:26
  • That's right. Placeholder for stupid length check. – user36303 Aug 25 '16 at 20:40

XMR Tests takes advantage of the Monero Blocks API to allow you to use the view key and check on a specific transaction

For example if you sent a donation to 44AFFq5kSiGBoZ4NMDwYtN18obc8AemS33DBLWs3H7otXft3XjrpDtQGv7SqSsaBYBb98uNbr2VBBEt7f2wfn3RVGQBEP3A

You could enter that address, plus the viewkey f359631075708155cc3d92a32b75a7d02a5dcf27756707b47a2b31b21c389501

and the transaction hash to prove that you made a donation

Update: The above tool has had problems post RingCT so I would currently recommend using the xmrchain tool instead. Paste your transaction hash into the search box and find your transaction. Next paste in your Monero address and view key into the decode outputs box to see the details of your transaction.

EDIT: Using Monero Blocks I found a transaction with the view key above being used as a payment ID. Here is the transaction where I presume a donor was confused about the purpose of a payment ID and used the view key as a payment ID by mistake.

I am not aware of any service that keeps track of common public view keys.

  • 1
    There's a key difference between the 2 services. xmrchain gets the user viewkey and performs the check by the server, while llcoins getx TX data from the server and performs the check locally so it is a more private variant. A malicious block explorer could collect user's viewkeys if it wanted to. – JollyMort Aug 2 '17 at 20:17
  • The correct URL is xmr.llcoins.net/checktx.html — the XMR Tests URL in the answer throws a js error and does not work. – ccpizza Jan 9 '18 at 15:26

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