eth_getBlockTransactionCountByHash

eth_getBlockTransactionCountByHash returns how many transactions are in the block identified by a given 32-byte hash. Base is Coinbase's OP Stack rollup that uses ETH for gas and produces a block about every 2 seconds, and this is the cheapest way to gauge how full one of those L2 blocks is. Send the block hash to https://base.therpc.io/YOUR_API_KEY (chain ID 8453) and the node replies with a hex count — "0x0" for an empty block — without transferring the full block body.

Use cases

• Quickly gauge how full a Base block is without paying to download the entire block body.
• Validate that a block holds the expected number of transactions after your indexer has processed it.
• Measure transaction throughput across a set of known Base block hashes to track network activity over time.

Parameters

Response

Example request

1curl https://base.therpc.io/YOUR_API_KEY \
2  -X POST \
3  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
4  -d '{
5    "jsonrpc": "2.0",
6    "method": "eth_getBlockTransactionCountByHash",
7    "params": ["0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000"],
8    "id": 1
9  }'

Try it live in the Base playground.

Errors & troubleshooting

Common pitfalls

• Returns null when the node has never seen the hash — null-check before you parseInt the result, otherwise you'll get NaN.
• If you already hold a block number and don't need hash-based certainty, use eth_getBlockTransactionCountByNumber instead and skip the hash lookup.

Supported networks

• Mainnet — Chain ID: 8453
• Sepolia — Chain ID: 84532

See also

• eth_getBlockTransactionCountByNumber
• eth_getBlockByHash
• eth_getTransactionByBlockHashAndIndex

1curl https://base.therpc.io/YOUR_API_KEY \
2  -X POST \
3  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
4  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"eth_getBlockTransactionCountByHash","params":[""]}'