Searching for Ethereum addresses that match a partial address?

Question

Using publicly available blockchain explorers such as Etherscan, is it possible to return all matching results for a partial address or transaction hash?

More specifically, if the known piece of data starts from the beginning of the txid or address (or at the end, reading right to left) and is at least n alphanumeric characters in length, wouldn't n only need to be large enough to capture the current number of addresses or txid in existence?

Apologies if my terminology is incorrect. But my thought is that there must be some length of data that is enough to return just a few possible matches. Something like 0xXXXXXXX or ....XXXXXXXX (I don't know the calculation to determine the minimum needed) should be enough to get a match or a few matches.

Anyhow, I haven't been able to get Etherscan to return any results when inputting anything less than a full address or txid. Is there a way I'm missing where a search can be run using less than the complete data? Thanks!

Answer 1

It is generally not possible to search for partial addresses or transaction hashes using publicly available blockchain explorers like Etherscan. Most blockchain explorers only allow users to search for complete addresses or transaction hashes, and will not return any results for partial or incomplete data.

The reason for this is that addresses and transaction hashes are typically represented by long strings of alphanumeric characters, and searching for partial data would not provide enough information to uniquely identify a specific address or transaction. For example, a transaction hash on the Ethereum blockchain is typically 32 bytes (64 hexadecimal characters) in length, and a partial transaction hash of only 8 hexadecimal characters would not be unique and could potentially match multiple transactions.

In order to search for a specific address or transaction on a blockchain explorer, you would need to provide the complete address or transaction hash. If you only have a partial address or transaction hash, you would need to obtain the full address or transaction hash in order to search for it using a blockchain explorer.

It's worth noting that some blockchain explorers may allow users to search for transactions or addresses using other information, such as the block number or timestamp associated with the transaction. However, these searches are typically not based on partial data and would still require the user to provide complete and accurate information in order to retrieve the desired results.