How to Track Cross-Chain Transaction History

If you want to track cross-chain transaction history, the best way is simple: use Zerion or Zerion API (for developers).

Zerion Wallet automatically aggregates your transaction history across 50+ blockchains, including Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, Base and more. You don’t need to copy-paste wallet addresses into a dozen explorers or manually trace bridge hops.

For developers, Zerion API offers powerful endpoints to fetch wallet transactions across 50+ chains. Whether you’re building an AI wallet, analytics dashboard, or security tool, Zerion makes cross-chain visibility seamless.

Understanding Cross-Chain Transactions

Cross-chain transactions are the backbone of today’s multi-chain crypto world. They allow users to bridge assets, interact with smart contracts, and execute swaps between different blockchain ecosystems.

Every cross-chain interaction typically involves:

• A source chain (where the asset originates)
• A destination chain (where it ends up)
• A bridge protocol to facilitate the transfer

Common types include:

• Bridging ETH from Ethereum to Arbitrum
• Swapping tokens between chains using a DEX aggregator
• Triggering smart contract calls across networks

Tracking these activities is challenging. Each blockchain has its own structure, explorers, and transaction logic. Bridges often split a transaction into multiple parts, making tracing non-trivial.

Cross-Chain Bridging Mechanisms

Bridges act as translators between chains. They lock assets on one chain and mint or release them on another. From a user’s perspective, it looks like one action, but under the hood, it’s multiple steps, often across different contracts and chains.

Each bridge has unique patterns. Some use custodial wallets, others use validators or liquidity pools. That makes it difficult to create a one-size-fits-all approach to tracking. And unfortunately, bridges are frequent targets for exploits, so having visibility into their transactions is not just useful, it's critical.

Transaction Data Structure Across Chains

Despite their differences, most blockchains share common transaction elements:

• Transaction hash
• Wallet address
• Timestamp

However, chains also include unique identifiers like ChainID and network-specific metadata. This makes it hard to align data without a normalization layer, which Zerion API handles out of the box.

Tools and Methodologies for Cross-Chain Tracking

There are 3 different ways of tracking cross-chain transactions: 

• Blockchain explorers for source and destination chains 
• Wallet trackers like Zerion 
• Wallet data APIs like Zerion API 

Blockchain Explorers

Most people know Etherscan, but on its own can’t help you track a transaction from Ethereum to Base or other chains.

Instead, you need two explorers and match transactions on the source and destination chains. On the source chain, a transaction would show up as a ‘send’ or complex smart contract call. On the destination chain, another transaction will be a ‘receive’, which may be batched with other transactions. 

Doing this manually can be tricky and prone to errors. That’s why wallet trackers and wallets with built-in multichain transaction histories can help. Zerion is a great example of that. 

Wallet trackers like Zerion

Zerion aggregates all transactions from 50+ supported chains in one transaction history feed. 

This means you’ll easily show you both ‘send’ and ‘receive’ transactions, abstracting all complexity. Here is an example of how it looks: 

You can use Zerion web app or mobile apps. You don’t even need to import your addresses (although you will want to!). Instead, you can enter your address in the search field and it will show you all transactions. 

For developers: Zerion API

If you’re building a cross-chain app or service, you can use Zerion API. 

Zerion API offers the same data you see in Zerion: wallet positions, wallet transactions, and more. All data is available across all 50+ supported chains in one call. 

This means that you don’t need to set up indexers and other infra on source and destination chains. Instead, just make one call to Zerion API and get data for both chains (you can filter out chains you don’t need). 

Here is an example of a call for transactions endpoint with Ethereum and Base: 

curl --request GET \
     --url 'https://api.zerion.io/v1/wallets/0x42b9dF65B219B3dD36FF330A4dD8f327A6Ada990/transactions/?currency=usd&page[size]=100&filter[asset_types]=&filter[chain_ids]=ethereum,base&filter[trash]=no_filter' \
     --header 'accept: application/json' \
     --header 'authorization: Basic emtfZGV2X2Q2YmEzYzM3NTNiYjQ2NWM4YjNjZTEzMTU2OTVlYjMwOg=='

And here is an example of Zerion API call’s output: 

{
  "links": {
    "self": "https://api.zerion.io/v1/wallets/0x42b9df65b219b3dd36ff330a4dd8f327a6ada990/transactions/?currency=usd&filter%5Bchain_ids%5D=base%2Cethereum&filter%5Btrash%5D=no_filter&page%5Bafter%5D=WyIiLCIiXQ%3D%3D&page%5Bsize%5D=100",
    "next": "https://api.zerion.io/v1/wallets/0x42b9df65b219b3dd36ff330a4dd8f327a6ada990/transactions/?currency=usd&filter%5Bchain_ids%5D=base%2Cethereum&filter%5Btrash%5D=no_filter&page%5Bafter%5D=WyIyMDI1LTA2LTA0VDIwOjUzOjExWiIsImU0NTkyNjg0MGE2NzVhY2ViYTIyNTM2MjU4YjRiMjM5Il0%3D&page%5Bsize%5D=100"
  },
  "data": [
    {
      "type": "transactions",
      "id": "f81256210272589b9d3fe717864417e4",
      "attributes": {
        "operation_type": "execute",
        "hash": "0x550a7714ebf55ded0d87550870e08e4a47fc8a7779b888a7e6e0f9fb338d17b7",
        "mined_at_block": 22823677,
        "mined_at": "2025-07-01T10:04:47Z",
        "sent_from": "0x42b9df65b219b3dd36ff330a4dd8f327a6ada990",
        "sent_to": "0x663dc15d3c1ac63ff12e45ab68fea3f0a883c251",
        "status": "confirmed",
        "nonce": 5443,
        "fee": {
          "fungible_info": {
            "name": "Ethereum",
            "symbol": "ETH",
            "icon": {
              "url": "https://cdn.zerion.io/eth.png"
            },
            "flags": {
              "verified": true
            },

Sign up for a free dev key for Zerion API and start tracking cross-chain transactions. 

Practical Implementation and Challenges

Building a Cross-Chain Tracking System

With data indexers, you’ll need to fetch and normalize data from multiple chains, handle different transaction structures, and sync it in real time or batch it for historical analysis.

This means:

• Integrating dozens of RPC endpoints or APIs
• Writing chain-specific decoding logic
• Managing a high-throughput database
• Dealing with edge cases when things go wrong

Or, again, just use Zerion API.

Case Studies in Cross-Chain Tracking

Security researchers have traced stolen funds through Tornado Cash to cross-chain bridges, then followed them through multiple hops to centralized exchanges.

Some airdrop hunters use tracking tools to monitor wallets that frequently bridge before big token events.

Traders building custom dashboards often want to track their entire portfolio performance, including swaps on Solana, farming on Base, and holding stETH on Ethereum, all in one view.

Zerion API can enable all these use cases. 

Challenges and Limitations

Technical Barriers

Chains differ in architecture and transaction format. You need a robust infrastructure layer to handle this complexity.

Privacy and Anonymity

Privacy coins and mixing protocols make it harder to track cross-chain movement. Even on public chains, it’s possible to obscure transactions using stealth addresses or split routes. And in many jurisdictions, ethical and legal boundaries apply to how much tracking is permissible.

Future Developments in Cross-Chain Tracking

Protocols like LayerZero and Chainlink CCIP are creating more unified standards for cross-chain messaging. This could eventually lead to more consistent and transparent transaction metadata.

At the same time, AI will likely play a bigger role in real-time anomaly detection and predictive analysis across networks.

FAQ: Cross-Chain Transaction Tracking