Ethereum Blockchain Monitoring

So I was looking to build a blockchain monitoring monitoring application for a hackathon and I had a couple of doubts about it.

1. Would generalised blockchain monitoring look more or less like etherscan.io or are there other fields which would require more digging?
2. In case of smart contracts, how is their monitoring like? This seems to be a promising field, but how does one connect with the application and take data from them?

Thanks! I'm also a beginner to blockchain and would greatly appreciate any resources to learn more :)