trace_filter

trace_filter searches OP Mainnet traces across a range of blocks, returning a flat array of all call-tree entries that match your criteria — sender or receiver address, a fromBlock/toBlock window, and after/count pagination. It is the cross-block counterpart to trace_transaction: instead of one transaction, you scan many blocks for every internal call touching the addresses you care about. On OP Mainnet — the OP Stack rollup where ETH is the native gas and value token — send the request to https://optimism.therpc.io/YOUR_API_KEY (chain ID 10, 0xa) to mine internal activity that never surfaces as event logs.

Use cases

• Find every internal ETH transfer sent to a contract across a range of OP Mainnet blocks, even ones that emitted no event.
• Detect MEV bot activity by filtering traces from known bot addresses over a block window.
• Build an indexer for all calls to a specific DeFi protocol on OP Mainnet, such as Velodrome or Synthetix.
• Run forensic analysis of every interaction with a contract before and after an exploit.

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_filter",
7    "params": [{}],
8    "id": 1
9  }'

Try it live in the Optimism playground.

Errors & troubleshooting

Common pitfalls

• Wide block ranges are extremely slow on OP Mainnet's high-throughput history and may be rejected by providers; always narrow fromBlock/toBlock and paginate with after/count.
• It requires a trace-enabled archive node — most public OP Mainnet endpoints do not expose trace_filter.
• Unlike eth_getLogs, traces are not indexed by topic, only by address and block number, so you cannot filter on event signatures here.

Supported networks

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

See also

• trace_transaction
• trace_block
• trace_call
• trace_replayTransaction

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_filter","params":[null]}'