trace_transaction

trace_transaction returns the OpenEthereum/Nethermind-style call tree for a historical OP Mainnet transaction, flattening every internal call, contract creation, and self-destruct into an array where traceAddress encodes each entry's path through the tree. Unlike debug_traceTransaction, it gives you the action-level call graph rather than raw opcodes, which is exactly what indexers and explorers need. OP Mainnet is the OP Stack rollup that meters gas in ETH, chain ID 10 (0xa); send the transaction hash to https://optimism.therpc.io/YOUR_API_KEY to retrieve its full internal-call structure.

Use cases

• Enumerate every internal ETH transfer in an OP Mainnet transaction, including ones never emitted as events.
• Trace fund flows across multiple contracts in a DeFi interaction such as a Velodrome swap route.
• Identify which sub-call caused a revert in a multi-hop OP Mainnet transaction.
• Index internal transactions for a block explorer in the style of Optimistic Etherscan.

Parameters

Response

Example request

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

Try it live in the Optimism playground.

Errors & troubleshooting

Common pitfalls

• It requires a trace-enabled archive node (Geth with --gcmode=archive plus the trace API, or Erigon/Nethermind with trace enabled); most public OP Mainnet light nodes do not expose it.
• The output differs from debug_traceTransaction — no opcode-level data, only call/create/self-destruct actions.
• Failed OP Mainnet transactions produce a truncated trace up to the revert point, so the call tree may be incomplete.

Supported networks

• Mainnet — Chain ID: 10
• Sepolia — Chain ID: 11155420

See also

• trace_replayTransaction
• trace_block
• trace_filter
• debug_traceTransaction

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