Try Quests to earn NEARNEAR Meta-Analysis
Every city has its governors, and the City of NEAR is no different. In this dashboard we are gonna assess the state of governance on NEAR, with an eye toward assessing its decentralization.
Overview
NEAR Protocol uses Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus to secure and validate transactions on the blockchain. Validators earn NEAR Token rewards for producing new blocks in the form of a static inflation rate of about 4.5% each year.
Token holders not interested in being a Validator can stake to a Validator’s staking pool and earn a portion of Token rewards too. This incentivizes Token holders to stay involved with the community and support Validators who are keeping the network running smoothly.
One of the main aspects to be aware about the blockchains that use proof of stake is the decentralization. Decentralization is by far one of the most important factors in a crypto ecosystem. As you probably already figured out, the validation system in place might fail to honor this by progressively moving towards a more traditional centralized environment. Why and how could this happen?
- As it was briefly mentioned previously, validators are incentivized to hold more and more NEAR to guarantee a spot in the network for themselves.
- Users look at the voting power (= total staked NEAR) of a validator as a good indicator of who to trust and delegate their funds to. This is understandable and that's why there's a need to constantly educate the user base and promote smaller validators.
Methodology
In this dashboard we are gonna asses the state of governance on NEAR in terms of decentralization basing on a different metrics:
- Distribution of staking by validators
- Power distribution by validator ranks
- Most common staking actions currently and over time
- Evolution of Nakamoto coefficient
If we take a look at the distribution of staking by validators, we can see how Meta, Aurora and Valisaurus DEX are the pools holding a major percentage of the total NEAR staking, followed by Astro-stakers, BinanceNode and Future_is_Near, whose percentage are above 5%. The rest of the pools have a percentage below 5%.
Looking at the power distribution of valdiators grouping them by ranges, we can see how in September 2021, the top 10 validators holded more than 80% of the total staked NEAR. However, this percentage decreased over time registaring a percentage near to 60% on July. It is good for Near decentralization. In fact, the top 10 to top 50 percentage increased from 16% to around current 32%.
These first metrics situated above show a perspective of the current actions being done on Near in terms of Governance. In the first donut, we can see that the major of the actions (more than 60%) are “deposit and stake” actions. Followed by unstake actions like “unstake” or “unstake_all”, representing no more than 33% of the actions together. Unbond delegations and update validator actions represents a few percentage of actions.
If we group the staking terms and unstaking terms as same actions, we can see how overall, staking represents 67.4% of the total actions while unstaking 32.5, the rest are for unbond delegation and update validator.
In terms of monthly actions, we can see how October 2021 was the most prominent one with more than 54k staking actions and 13.4 unstaking actions. A big difference between both terms being more users staking than unstaking. From that point to April 2022, the numbers remained cosntant but during the past months it seems that the activity decreased a little bit. The other type of actions are neglegible.
Another interesting metric to measure the decentralization is the Nakamoto Coefficient, that represents how many validators are needed to accumulate more than 50% of the total current NEAR staked.
Based on a Monthly basis, we can see how the amount of needed validators has increased from 2 to 6. Showing an improvement on the Near decentralization.
Another important metric for decentralization is to take a view on the number of total amount staked versus the amount of validators that are holding the tokens.
In this case, we can see how in a monthly basis, the amount of NEAR staked increased over time. However, the situation is not similar fo the amount of active validators. In this case, it seems that the major amount of validators were registered on January 2022 month, and after that, the number of validators started to decrease while the amount of NEAR staked continued increasing. Another good point for decentralization.
The final approach is to take an overview of the evolution of the governance activity around the current top 3 validators. Considering the current percentage of staking sharings, Astro Stakers, Meta and Aurora pools are the top 3 ones. Then, this part have been done taking into account these three main validators.
The first of the charts shows the percentage that the top 3 validators are holding among the total NEAR staked in a monthly basis. It can be seen how the percentage was around 25% during the first months and in March reached the highest value above 30%, now the percentages decreased a little bit.
Looking at the monthly Near staked, it can be seen that the amount experimented an uptrend. In January, the last of the 3 pools incoroporated, Aurora, started to acquire some Near staked. Since now, the total staked by these three pools has passed from around 25M to the current 50M of NEAR.
Finally, considering the last two charts, we can see how both, the amount of staking actions and the amount of delegators that this pools are capting decreased over the last months. While from September 2021 to April 2022 the numbers remained similar in a specific range, since May 2022 a downtrend has been done.
Key insights
- Overall, the major of the actions (more than 60%) are “deposit and stake” actions. Followed by unstake actions like “unstake” or “unstake_all”, representing no more than 33% of the actions together. Unbond delegations and update validator actions represents a few percentage of actions.
- Meta, Aurora and Valisaurus DEX are the pools holding a major percentage of the total NEAR staking, followed by Astro-stakers, BinanceNode and Future_is_Near, whose percentage are above 5%. The rest of the pools have a percentage below 5%.
- In September 2021, the top 10 validators holded more than 80% of the total staked NEAR. However, this percentage decreased over time registaring a percentage near to 60% on July. It is good for Near decentralization. In fact, the top 10 to top 50 percentage increased from 16% to around current 32%.
- The amount of NEAR staked increased over time, but not the active validators. In this case, it seems that the major amount of validators were registered on January 2022 month, and after that, the number of validators started to decrease while the amount of NEAR staked continued increasing.
- Based on a Monthly basis, we can see how the amount of needed validators has increased from 2 to 6.
- The top 3 validators was holding around 25% during the first months and in March reached the highest value above 30%, now the percentages decreased a little bit.
- The total staked by these three pools has passed from around 25M to the current 50M of NEAR.
- The amount of staking actions and the amount of delegators that this pools are capting decreased over the last months. While from September 2021 to April 2022 the numbers remained similar in a specific range, since May 2022 a downtrend has been done.
Overview
In this world, every traveller needs adequate funds to fully enjoy the city. It's not enough to know which places to visit, but you also need to take a good look at how to manage your savings so that you can enjoy your trip with peace of mind. For this reason, another of Near's main pillars is the Financial District.
Methodology
In this section, we are gonna take a deep look on the financial metrics around Near Protocol. The main metrics to be analyzed are:
- The differences between small fishes users staking metrics and whales staking metrics:
- Number of transactions
- Volume staked
- Top 25 whales on NEAR
- Top 10 tokens most used
- Top 10 tokens most traded
The Financial District
Local Government
The Art of District
Overview
One of the features that is attracting more users on the Near network is NFTs. It seems that the NEAR ecosystem for NFTs is very promising at the moment. But we'll get to that later in the results section.
While the recent downturn has probably dampened price action, the sheer amount of development happening around NFTs in the NEAR ecosystem is pretty amazing. In fact, this 2022 seems to be where the most activity is being concentrated and new NFT marketplaces are emerging. Now we'll look at that next.
Methodology
This section has been created with the intention to analyze the NFT scene on NEAR. The idea is to provide an overview of the main NFT sales activity as well as some characteristics about the Near NFT projects and marketplaces, as well as a user analysis.
Some user behavior metrics have been comupted such as:
- Average number of NFT sold per user
- Average NEAR volume sold per user
- Average number of NFT bought per user
- Average NEAR volume bought per user
Other metrics have been calculated by NFT marketplace and NFT collection:
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Daily number of sales over time
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Daily number of sellers over time
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Daily NEAR volume of sales over time
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Daily average NFT price over time
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The Capital of NEAR
Overview
NEAR Protocol is a decentralized platform that seeks to facilitate the development and deployment of dApps on its blockchain technology. More precisely, NEAR Protocol is a decentralized smart contract platform that focuses on creating a developer and user-friendly experience. Its consensus mechanism is Proof-of-Stake and it uses sharding technology to achieve speed and scalability. NEAR also provides a bridge and scaling solution for the Ethereum blockchain.
Looking at the Capital metrics on Near, we can see how the number of transactions done across the protocol remained constant over time, reaching the highest numbers during May month of 2022, coinciding with the LUNA UST token depegging.
In the case of the evolution of active users, the chart looks different. In this case, the number of users seems to be decreasing over time, even the number spiked during March 2022.
The transaction fees paid in NEAR followed a similar strucutre then the number of transactions, but the relationship is not strong at all. In this case, the pek was registered on January 2022 and since then, the fees started to decrease over time.
To close this section, here it can be seen the number of smart contracts created over time, both successful and failed creations.
In this case, the trajectory looks similar to the trasnactions fees one. The number of new smart contracts remained constant from the beginning until April 2022, but then decreased a little bit.
So far, there have been more than 10k unique smart contracts created and 233 failed contracts.
The platforms with more smart contract interactions have been Aurora and Nearcon, with a great difference against the rest of the platforms.
Looking at the small fishes stakingmetrics and comparing it against the whales metrics, it can be seen how there are no so much differences between them.
In the case of the number of staking actions, we can see how whales do more transactions than smal fishes. So far, whales reached more than 1.4k staking actions while small fishes around 800. The volume staked in this case is similar in both sides over time, but the lowers are higher on whales, being staked more than 18M of NEAR while small fishes below 10M.
Finally, in the left it can be seen the top 25 whales, being the top 1 the Binancenode.
Regarding the top 10 tokens most used by Near users and the top 10 most swapped, we can see how NEAR is the top 1 in both cases, being the most popular across the platform. REF, USDT and USDC are well situated as well but with lower percentages.
Key insights
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Whales do more transactions than smal fishes. So far, whales reached more than 1.4k staking actions while small fishes around 800.
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The volume staked in this case is similar in both sides over time, but the lowers are higher on whales, being staked more than 18M of NEAR while small fishes below 10M.
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The top 1 whale is the Binancenode.
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The top 10 tokens most used by Near users are NEAR, REF and USDT.
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The top 10 most swapped tokens are NEAR, USDT and USDC.
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The average NFT sells per user are currently around 7.81 sells/user.
The average NFT buyes per user are now around 7.22 NFT buys/user.
This assumptions tell us that users are selling more NFTs than buying it. It could make sense if we take into account that the NFTs can be minted by the users.
On the other hand, the average volume sold per user is around 86.6 NEAR.
The average volume bought per user is around 80.1 NEAR per user.
In this case, we can see how sellers are trying to sell the NFTs in a higher prices, while buyers are trying to get their NFTs in a low cost manner.
Splitting the data by each NFT marketplace, first of all we have to say that for this case, we have considered the most popular marketplaces on Near Protocol right now such as Paras, Apollo42 and Uniqart. It is clear that the major of the sales take place on Paras marketplace, which concentrated the major of the activity in all cases. In fact, Paras is the unique marketplace that started on 2021. Uniqart activity started on March 2022, while Apollo42 activity started on June 2022.
Looking at the global numbers, it seems like there is still an early phase for Uniqart and Apollo42 and they are not catching the public attention yet. All of the activity is concentrated in Paras.
Key insights
- Splitting the data by each NFT marketplace, the major of the sales take place on Paras marketplace, which concentrated the major of the activity in all cases. In fact, Paras is the unique marketplace that started on 2021. Uniqart activity started on March 2022, while Apollo42 activity started on June 2022.
- The major amount of sales took place during the first days after its collection launch time. The same occured with the user activity behavior and the sales volume.
- There have been a total of 7.81 sells per wallet in average so far with an average of 86.6 NEAR volume sold.
- The average NFT buys per user are 7.22 and the average volume bought in NEAR per user around 80.1.
Your Bridge Passport: Rainbow Bridge
Looking at the two first charts, it can be seen how the most common bridge are between Near and Aurora. In both cases, there have been more transactions from Near to Aurora and from Aurora to Near than from Near to Ethereum and from Ethereum to Near.
It is to say that there is more different in number of transactions than in volume.
The activity seems to increase when the volume tier is higher. Then, the whales realize more activity. The top actions done after a bridge is a swap, followed by add liquidation. However, staking NEAR is also a good option for low tier users.
Key insights
- The most common bridge are between Near and Aurora. In both cases, there have been more transactions from Near to Aurora and from Aurora to Near than from Near to Ethereum and from Ethereum to Near.
- The activity seems to increase when the volume tier is higher. Then, the whales realize more activity.
- The top actions done by whales after a bridge is a swap, followed by add liquidation.
- However, staking NEAR is also a good option for low tier users.
Credits
The rest of the dashboard have been done using my own metrics and dashboard regarding Near Protocol
Key insights
- The number of transactions done across the protocol remained constant over time, reaching the highest numbers during May month of 2022, coinciding with the LUNA UST token depegging.
- The number of users seems to be decreasing over time, even the number spiked during March 2022.
- The transaction fees paid in NEAR followed a similar strucutre then the number of transactions, but the relationship is not strong at all.
- The number of new smart contracts remained constant from the beginning until April 2022, but then decreased a little bit.
- So far, there have been more than 10k unique smart contracts created and 233 failed contracts.
- The platforms with more smart contract interactions have been Aurora and Nearcon, with a great difference against the rest of the platforms.
Overview
Rainbow Bridge is a platform that acts as an ETH ↔ NEAR bridge for assets to flow freely between the NEAR and Ethereum blockchains, while allowing users to bridge any ERC-20 token they wish.
Transfers between NEAR and Aurora require a single transaction, cost a few cents and occur instantly.
Transfers to Ethereum, on the other hand, involve two transactions: starting in Aurora or NEAR, and ending in Ethereum.