Learning the Basics

The Herd app is built as an collaborative terminal (coterminal) with an agent (Sage) who exists on every page to help you find and understand the chain. You can watch the video below for an overview of memory and the overall app.
If you haven’t used a block explorer like Etherscan before, explorers in crypto are used to investigate smart contracts, wallets, and transactions. Our coterminal uses an LLM to interpret each of these objects, to provide richer context alongside all the data.
The coterminal and chat are NOT made for analytics, do not try and ask it Dune style analytical questions. It’s targeted at understanding the logic and relationships between onchain objects.

Search and Memory

In the image below, the top bar is the search bar, which will search for contracts, tokens, and protocols based on your query.
Herd main interface
See below, where we search for “clanker” and the results show a bit about the contract and then have a red plus/minus button. This is used for adding or removing a contract from memory.
Herd search results
Search covers contracts, tokens, and protocols in three different result tabs (note for tokens and protocols, the searches must be single word). If you can’t find a contract, please ask in the Discord for help. You can navigate to different pages and the chatId should stay in context (or you can select the chat from the box). Note that for trails, you will only have ONE conversation tied to the trail and it CANNOT be changed. Memory acts as a shortcut for referencing objects in Herd (chat, trails, more in the future). If you’ve used Cursor, then this will be familiar to you. If not, just think of this as your “shopping cart” of objects while using Herd.
Herd  memory panel
Herd’s chat works the same way any other LLM chat app does. It uses OpenAI’s gpt-4o-mini model so expect succinct responses. Its primary function is to provide contextual answers about contract functions/events/behaviors. Chats are not currently publicly shareable.

Coterminal Pages

There are four main pages on the coterminal, each focused on helping you quickly interpret and find onchain relationships. If you have any issues or feature requests, you can bring them up in the Discord.

Contract Page

The contract page is a bit different from how other block explorers work:
  • We start with a summary page, which is an LLM interpretation of all contract functions and events. If it’s a token, it will also show top holders.
  • If it’s proxy, we show the underlying implementation directly. There is upgrade history in the dropdown in the top left so you can see all past versions
Herd contract summary page
Herd works with verified and unverified Solidity contracts (using Etherscan for verified, and Heimdall for unverified). Vyper contracts are not supported at the moment.
Next up we have a “related contracts” tab, which shows all the top contracts either calling or being called by the current address (as well as which functions are being called). This helps you quickly understand protocol relationships and key transaction drivers.
Herd contract related tab
Then we have functions and events tabs, each with LLM summaries of what they handle as well as basic 1 day stats.
Herd functions tab page
Each function/event comes with it’s own detailed page. It covers inputs/outputs, linked events, and shows most recent transactions calling this function (directly or indirectly). You can also copy just the individual function/event abi from here too.
Herd functions tab page
Functions can also be executed directly on the page, which an LLM that helps you prepare inputs and simulate the transactions. You can also paste in a previous transaction calling this function to pre-fill the input values directly.
Herd function execution page
There is a code tab as well, which lets you explore the proxy and contract code together (and search across them). The abi can be copied from here as well.
Herd code page

Protocol Page

Many contracts will have protocol labels, such as “Circle”, “Zora”, “Uniswap”, etc. These can be clicked to take you to the protocol page, showing main links to the protocol and also a chronological ordering of their deployed contracts.
Herd function execution page
If you notice any wrong or missing labels, you can message the team (on Twitter or Discord).

Transaction Page

We show an in depth summary with traces of each transaction (this works for any simulations you do on Herd as well).
Herd transaction page
Each trace can be expanded so that you can view the summary, decoded data, and raw information together.
Herd transaction expand page

Wallet Page

On the wallet page, we mainly showcase the top contracts they have called as well as top contracts they have deployed.
Herd wallet page