Ethereum Staking Through the Lens of Lido
In this issue of Coin Metrics’ State of the Network, we dive into Lido—the largest player within the staking economy—and understand the state of its liquid staking token (stETH), governance token (LDO) and underlying node-operator composition. With this analysis, we seek [...]
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Investigating the Failed Stellar Inflation Experiment
Each blockchain has a unique process for issuing new supply. For some, like Bitcoin, the full issuance schedule and final supply are encoded into the protocol (and is unlikely to change, due to social consensus). Bitcoin issues new supply through [...]
State of the Network 2019 Year in Review
In this special edition of State of the Network (SOTN) we take a look back at how the major cryptoassets performed over 2019 across four categories: Valuation Usage and Adoption Economics Security and Health We selected several metrics for each [...]
Revisiting the Block Reward Halving Theory
The upcoming block reward halving for Bitcoin, anticipated in May 2020, has already given rise to intense discussion about its potential impact. Several theories have been advanced to study supply-side dynamics surrounding halvings and its eventual impact (or lack thereof) [...]
Ranking Crypto Assets by Auditability
In Medieval times, landed estates’ accounts were read out loud to a person charged by the local ruler to ensure that their steward had not swindled them. As the primary role of this person was to listen (audire in latin), they [...]
Analyzing the Supply Distributions of Projects with On-Chain Governance
It takes a whole network of people to make a public blockchain work. You need miners to validate and secure the ledger. You need developers to maintain and update the protocol’s code. And you need users and investors who use [...]
The Psychology of Bitcoin Bubbles as Measured by Investor Cost Basis
Bubbles and subsequent crashes in financial assets occur with regular frequency in economic history, largely due to deeply-rooted cognitive biases in human psychology. In Bitcoin’s ten year history, at least three complete bubble-and-crash cycles have been observed. We examine the [...]
Weekly Network Data Insights
Crypto markets took a significant downturn towards the tail end of last week, with BTC price dropping to six-month lows. As a result, most major assets are down by over 10% week over week. The crash came after the People’s [...]
How Many Bitcoins Are Permanently Lost?
Bitcoin’s whitepaper, which recently turned 11 years old, is so concise that it makes only a passing mention of supply: Once a predetermined number of coins have entered circulation, the incentive can transition entirely to transaction fees [...]
The Evolution of Ethereum Tokens
In 2015, Ethereum ushered in a new era for blockchains: the age of the token. Broadly defined, a “token” represents a utility or asset and is typically issued on an existing blockchain. In contrast, a “coin” is a crypto asset [...]