How to Read Block Explorers and Understand Transactions, Traces, and Logs on EVM

This guide explains how to read block explorer pages for EVM transactions, traces and logs, and how to map them to tables on Dune. It says the transaction page's key field to identify is whether the "to" address is a contract, and that the first concept to learn is the difference between an EOA and a contract address. It also explains that the first 4 bytes of input data form the function signature, that Dune decodes contract calls and events into tables such as uniswap_v3_ethereum.Pair_evt_Swap, and that the trace_address array shows call depth and order. The author recommends Phalcon for viewing traces, since Etherscan is harder to read for that purpose.