sonde
Sonde was an XRP Ledger explorer with network analytics, portfolio tracking, and tools for investigating account activity. I designed, built, and ran it myself.
The balance comes first
I put the balance, holdings, and recent activity at the top of the account page. You could check what an account held before getting into the ledger’s technical details.
Balance, value, reserve, and account age sit above the tabs.
Different levels of detail
Someone new to the ledger might only need an account’s holdings. A trader might want profit and loss, cost basis, and allocation. An analyst might need raw transactions or fund tracing. I organized the tabs so people could get to the level of detail they needed.
For a trader: portfolio value, performance over time, and allocation.
For an analyst: a transaction’s balance changes and the ledger nodes it touched.
Loading and live updates
Search accepted addresses, transaction IDs, ledger numbers, and token names. Account pages had twelve tabs covering transactions, holdings, NFTs, liquidity pools, offers, and escrows. Each section loaded separately, so people could read the balance and holdings while the rest loaded. During live updates, existing data stayed visible until the new results arrived.
Beyond account pages, I built network metrics, price charts, trading views, a wallet-connected portfolio, and a token directory. The app, analytics, and fund-tracing tools used separate databases.
Network insights: the live price, market figures, and the price chart.
A token page for Sologenic (SOLO): price, market figures, the price chart, the order book, and top holders.
Scoring wallets, tracing funds
Investigation tools scored wallets by profitability and consistency, traced funds through up to six transfers, and flagged possible wash trading.
One wallet’s score out of 100, the factors behind it, and its history.
The leaderboard: scored wallets ranked by PnL, win rate, and Sharpe.
Questions in plain English
Ask the Ledger let people ask questions in plain English. The AI assistant could query the investigation tools as part of the conversation.
Ask the Ledger opens on suggested questions.
Name and visual identity
A sonde is a measuring probe, which felt like a good name for a ledger explorer. I used dark slate backgrounds with a salmon accent (#E8856C) for key metrics and live indicators.
I used Satoshi for headings, DM Sans for interface text, and IBM Plex Mono for addresses, hashes, and amounts. Small colored tags identify transaction types, including payments, trades, NFTs, trust lines, and liquidity-pool activity.
The landing page uses the same salmon accent as the app.
A ledger’s 70 transactions, each type marked by a small colored tag.
Outcome
Sonde launched with a public explorer, analytics, and paid portfolio and investigation tools. Subscriptions accepted fiat and crypto. I later made the full explorer free, with Claude-powered questions available on the $5-a-month Pro plan. I handled design, development, and operations. When infrastructure costs exceeded subscription revenue, I closed the hosted app and released the code on GitHub under the MIT license.
July 2026 pricing: a free explorer and a $5-a-month Pro plan for Claude-powered questions.