Question 🌻🌼🌺🌷🌹☘

• How centralized or decentralized is NEAR, really?
• Choose at least two distinct measures of decentralization that can be explored with on-chain data; clearly define those metrics; and outline how NEAR performs based on those metrics.
• In your view, is NEAR becoming more centralized or decentralized over time?

Introduction

• Near is a layer 1 blockchain network, with $NEAR as their native token, their developers can build decentralized applications (dapps) which are called cities by Near, and the users are their citizens, there is a lot of social cities, and Near aims to be an eco-friendly Network.
• To answer the decentralization we’ll focus on Stake activity, and the nakamoto coefficient.
• This coefficient is a way to quantify the decentralization of a blockchain.

Stake Activity

There is a lot of stake activity in the Q1 of 2022, but after april their activity starts to drop, although there are a spike in Stake volume at August 31, most of the activity is Stake over Unstake and it’s seems very stable for this year.

Stake Pools are gaining momentum in the last days, but stay constant with more than 90 different addresses per day.

Other Metrics

It’s seems that the number of Unique Validators has increased in this year from +-60 in 2021 to +-100 in 2022.

There is a lot of Near being swapped for Assets in the last months of the year with the spikes at June

The Nakamoto Coefficient is moving between 14 and 17

Summary

Seeing how the numbers of validators increase from 60 to 100, and How the nakamoto coefficient keeps between 14 and 17, it’s seems that Near is becoming more Decentralized, over time.

There are more $NEAR being swapped in the later months, and although the stake has decrease in comparison at Q1 of 2022, there is a lot of Stake activity with spikes after the Q1.

The Stake Pools are increasing in the later week and so the Stake activity too, with Stake being dominant over Unstake.

Methodology

• Using Flipside Data Tables for Near (And curated by MetricsDao)

  • near.core.fact_blocks: To get the Unique Validators.
  • near.core.dim_staking_actions: To get info about staking
  • near.core.fact_transactions: To get the nakamoto coefficient.

• Nakamoto Coefficient by Jacktheguy

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