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 counts as a cluster, and how does the monthly allowance work?
One unit is one distinct cluster a month. Open it, add it to the graph, switch every tab, come back next week — still one unit. Search and suggestions are not metered. Counters reset on the first of the month, and the usage meter in your account shows where you stand. Free accounts get 25 clusters a month, Supporter 150, Professional 1,000. How the units work.
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?
Flow is Bitcoin today, and ordinals and runes live on Bitcoin, so they are covered. Which chain comes next is an open question, and we would rather answer it with the people who need it. If your work depends on tracing another chain, tell us which one and why: customers and development partners steer that list. Tell us which chain.
Is there an API?
Professional and Enterprise accounts export their own traces as JSON; Enterprise adds a metered API for clusters and flows. 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?
Sometimes. Most labels describe wallets and services — an exchange, a mining pool, a marketplace. Labels come from public sources and from the community, and some of them name a person. Every label shows its source and confidence and is a hypothesis, not a finding. We don’t control what people submit, but we review it, and a label can be removed on request through the contact form.
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. You don’t need to tell us who you are.
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?
Use the contact form with the email address on the account; we confirm by writing to that address.
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 full counterparty lists, indirect exposure, Nearest, Roles and 150 clusters a month. Flow is in beta, so every new account gets it at no charge; the price on the pricing page applies later, with notice.
What is Professional?
The tier for law firms, professional services, compliance and research teams: the size of every cluster and its Addresses tab, the source citations behind every label, export of your traces as JSON, 1,000 clusters a month, invoice billing and priority support. It is set up by inquiry on the pricing page.
What does Enterprise include?
Enterprise is custom: white-labeling and customer instances, on-premise deployment on your own servers (including semi air-gapped configurations for sensitive workspaces), more access to data, a metered API, a pooled allowance sized to the team and onboarding with us. Open a conversation.
Does paying affect labels?
Never. Money never buys attribution influence: no tier grants label weight or curator status. This is doctrine.
Who pays for Flow?
No foundation. Bitcoin has none, and neither do we. Professional and Enterprise customers fund the machine; the public uses it. How the tiers work.