LumenQuery Tutorial: How to Use the Stellar Web3 Developer Platform

LumenQuery is a comprehensive Stellar Web3 developer platform that provides Stellar network analytics tools, a Stellar transaction query API, smart contract exploration, real-time monitoring, and portfolio intelligence—all through a single platform. This tutorial walks you through every feature, from setting up your account to building production applications with Stellar node monitoring tools and the Stellar API for developers.

1. Getting Started with the Stellar Web3 Developer Platform

Create a free account to get started. The free tier includes 10,000 API requests per month and full access to all dashboard features.

# After signing up, get your API key from the dashboard
export LUMENQUERY_API_KEY="lq_your_key"

# Test your connection
curl -H "X-API-Key: $LUMENQUERY_API_KEY" \
  https://api.lumenquery.io/ledgers?limit=1

2. Natural Language Query: The Stellar Transaction Query API Made Easy

The Natural Language Query Interface lets you explore the Stellar transaction query API without writing code. Just type your question in plain English:

Results are displayed as interactive tables with clickable account IDs. Every query also shows the equivalent SQL, helping you learn the underlying data model.

3. Stellar Network Analytics Tools

The Analytics Dashboard provides real-time Stellar network analytics tools with no authentication required. Monitor:

• Network Overview — Ledger progression, TPS, success rates, base fees
• Token Analytics — Asset velocity, whale movements, payment activity charts
• Contract Analytics — Soroban invocation counts, gas usage, success rates

Read the Analytics documentation for details on data sources, refresh rates, and understanding stroops.

4. Smart Contract Explorer (Soroban Pro)

The Smart Contract Explorer decodes Soroban contract data into human-readable format:

• Decoded Calls — XDR translated to function names, parameters, return values
• Storage Viewer — Browse persistent, temporary, and instance storage
• Event Stream — Real-time contract event monitoring
• Contract Deployment — Deploy contracts directly from the browser with Freighter wallet

See the contracts documentation for the full feature reference.

5. Live Transaction Viewer

The Live Transaction Viewer streams decoded transactions in real time via Server-Sent Events. Operations are translated into plain English (e.g., "Payment of 100 XLM from GAXJ... to GBCD..."). This is one of LumenQuery's most powerful Stellar network analytics tools for monitoring network activity.

6. Portfolio Intelligence

Portfolio Intelligence lets you aggregate multiple Stellar accounts, track P&L with FIFO cost basis, assess trustline risk, and monitor Soroban DeFi positions. See the Portfolio documentation for details.

7. API Integration: Stellar RPC API Service and Horizon

LumenQuery provides managed access to both the Stellar RPC API service and the Horizon REST API through a single account:

curl -H "X-API-Key: lq_..." \
  api.lumenquery.io/accounts/GXXX

# Returns: balances, sequence,
# thresholds, signers, data

curl -X POST rpc.lumenquery.io \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0",
  "method":"getLatestLedger",
  "id":1}'

For a detailed comparison, read our Horizon vs RPC vs Indexers comparison. For RPC specifics, see our Stellar RPC guide. For a hands-on coding tutorial, follow our Stellar API Tutorial.

8. Monitoring and Observability

LumenQuery also serves as one of the most comprehensive Stellar node monitoring tools available. The platform exposes Prometheus-compatible metrics for:

• API response times and error rates
• Request volumes per endpoint
• Network health indicators
• Cache hit rates and latency

For self-hosted infrastructure monitoring, our blog post on monitoring Stellar validators and Horizon nodes covers Prometheus and Grafana setup in detail.