Conclusion

In conclusion, the analysis of block validators on NEAR has indicated that the validation process has been fairly distributed among the validators of the network. The data has already shown that the position of validators is not guaranteed and a new player might come and take a massive share of another big player. Besides that, the analysis of transactions involving these validators has demonstrated that their main activity is related to the staking and unstaking process of NEAR tokens. The changes in staking and unstaking volume of different validators have shown that while some of them have seen massive upward movements, some of them have also seen negative balances and the loss of their validation power.

Methodology

The address of validators was collected using the block_author column of the fact_blocks table of the core schema of the near database. Then, the top 10 validators were selected to further analyze their performance. Different types of transactions that these validators had been involved in were obtained using the fact_transactions and fact_actions_events_function_call tables. Ultimately, the subsequent method names regarding the staking were selected and the staking behavior of validators was analyzed. After calculating the volume of staked and unstaked tokens of each of the top validators, their balance was also measured. All of the analyses in this dashboard have been conducted since the beginning of the year up to current date.

Introduction

According to the official documentation of NEAR, its network is decentralized where multiple people collaborate in order to keep it secure. These people are called validators. In order to make sure that all the transactions in the network are valid, i.e. that nobody is trying to steal money, the validators follow a specific consensus mechanism. NEAR protocol uses a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) mechanism to keep its blockchain working correctly and resistant to attacks. In a PoS network, users show their support to specific network validators by delegating NEAR tokens to them in a process known as staking. The main idea is that, if a validator has a large number of tokens delegated is because the community trusts them.

Analysis

Since the start of the year, the network has had a total of 124 validators confirming nearly 15M blocks and 125M transactions. The top 10 validators have been responsible for the validation of slightly above 40% of the total blocks and transactions, combined. These top validators have had a validation share of between 2% to around 9% of the total blocks and transactions, each.

The analysis of staking and unstaking behavior of the top validators has shown that while validators such as aurora, zavodil, and astro-stakers have a considerable inflow and consequently, a positive balance, validators such as staked and foundry have seen a massive unstaking volume, resulting in their negative balance since the beginning of the year.

The daily analysis of the staking and unstaking volume of each of these top validators demonstrated that not all of them had a steady incoming or outgoing volume of NEAR tokens since the start of the year.

While the volume of staking was higher in the first quarter of 2022, the amount of unstaking has increased in the recent month with sudden and major spikes on the charts.

The daily number of validated blocks and transactions has demonstrated that, although most of the validators have kept their share of daily validations, the staked.poolv1.near validator has massively lost its power in recent weeks, while the bzam….poolv1.near validator has gained a substantial share of the total since the start of March.

The analysis of transactions involving the top validators has indicated that nearly 50% of all of the transactions have related to the staking. The unstaking transactions have accounted for slightly below 20% of the total.