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.

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.

Recenlty, the NEAR Foundation released a report, titled The State of Staking . Key details include:

• Of the 131 validators, eight validators hold 33% of the total staked balance, representing 154 million $NEAR.
• A total of 15 validators, hold 50% of the total staked balance, and 116 validators hold the other 50% of the total NEAR available.
• A stake of 33% is the stake that can halt the network, according to Pikespeak.

Methodology

The intention of this dashboard is to analyze the state of governance on NEAR and in terms of decentralization and corroborate the numbers shown by the NEAR Foundation. As well, we will try to add some other key values that should be added as well. To do that, we will basing our study on these different metrics:

• Evolution of Nakamoto coefficient
• Power and staking distribution by validator ranks
• Near staked and number of validators
• Other added metrics:
  • Distribution of staking by valdiators
  • Evolution of blockchain delegators

First metric proposal to be added: Blockchain delegators

Looking at the power distribution of validators grouping them by ranges, we can see how over the past three months, the top 15 validators holdings reduced from almost 70% of total staked NEAR to around 67%.

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 the past 3 months. 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 mid August.

Nakamoto coefficient

In these charts above, we can see firstly the change in number of delegators on each chain, as well as the cumulative change over the past three months.

If we observe closely, we can see how the major of the days on Near have been negative over the past three months. In fact, if we take a look at the cumulative charts, we can observe how Near has lost almost 1k delegators over the past 3 months.

Blockchain validators

The first metric analyzed to measure the decentralization is the Nakamoto Coefficient, that represents how many validators are needed to accumulate more than 33% of the total current NEAR staked. As we can see, there is currently needed 8 validators holding 33% of the total staked balance, as stated in the “The State of Staking” report.

Based on a Monthly basis, we can see how the amount of needed validators in Near increased from 6 to 8 showing an improvement on the Near decentralization.

• The Nakamoto Coefficient, that represents how many validators are needed to accumulate more than 33% of the total current NEAR staked. Based on a Monthly basis, we can see how the amount of needed validators in Near increased from 6 to 8 showing an improvement on the Near decentralization.
• Looking at the power distribution of validators grouping them by ranges, we can see how over the past three months, the top 15 validators holdings reduced from almost 70% of total staked NEAR to around 67%.
• In terms of delegators, Near have been negative over the past three months. In fact, if we take a look at the cumulative charts, we can observe that Near has lost almost 1k delegators.
• In the final chart we have observed how the total staking is distributed among the top 15 validators, having at the top 3: Figment, AstroStakers and Meta.

Key insights

Second metric proposal to be added: Distribution of staked NEAR

If we take a look at the distribution of staking by validators, we can see how there are a top 3 validators holding more than 7.5% of total NEAR staked each. These validators are composed by Figment, AstroStakers and Meta.

In fact, we can corroborate again that the top 15 validatos hold more tan 60% of the total NEAR staked.