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.

On the other hand, Solana is a highly functional open source project that implements a new high-speed, permissionless, layer 1 blockchain.

Solana's Proof of Stake is designed for quick confirmation of the current sequence of transactions produced by the PoH generator, for voting and selecting the next PoH generator, and for punishing misbehaving validators. Unlike traditional blockchains, transactions in Solana are not batched into blocks.

Methodology

The intention of this dashboard is to analyze the state of governance on NEAR and Solana in terms of decentralization and compare it between them. To do that, we will basing our study on these different metrics:

• Distribution of staking actions
• Evolution of blockchain delegators
• Power and staking distribution by validator ranks
• Most common staking actions currently and over time
• Evolution of Nakamoto coefficient

Staking actions

These first metrics situated above and left show a perspective of the current actions being done on Near and Solana in terms of Governance.

In the first donut, we can see that the major of the actions on Near (more than 60%) are “staking” actions in general, and has been followed the same during the past 3 months. On the toher hand, looking at the Solana actions, we can see how in this case, the staking actions represent less than 12%, while unstaking ones more than 26%. However, in this case, there is a more heterogeneous distribution being merge and split actions.

Blockchain delegators

Looking at the power distribution of validators grouping them by ranges, we can see how over the past three months, the top 10 validators holdings reduced from almost 60% of total staked NEAR to around 45%. 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.

On the other hand, power distribution of validators on Solana seems to vary a little bit more. In this case, Solana has more validators on the top. In this case the distribution is more heterogeneous what indicates a more healthy blockchian in terms of decentralization. Besides, the total SOL staked over the past 3 months have increased, while the amount of validators remained more constant.

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 while for Solana the major of them have been positives, gaining more delegators. In fact, if we take a look at the cumulative charts, we can observe opposite trends on these chains. In total, Near has lost more than 1.2k delegators while Solana has won more than 12k.

Blockchain validators

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 and 33% in the case of SOL.

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.

On Solana, the Nakamoto coefficient has also icnreased from 13 to 29, which is a huge increase as well.

• The major of the actions on Near (more than 60%) are “staking” actions in general, and has been followed the same during the past 3 months. On the other hand, looking at the Solana actions, we can see how in this case, the unstaking actions represent more than the staking ones.
• In terms of delegators, Near have been negative over the past three months while for Solana the major of them have been positives, gaining more delegators. In fact, if we take a look at the cumulative charts, we can observe opposite trends on these chains. In total, Near has lost more than 1.2k delegators while Solana has won more than 12k.
• Looking at the power distribution of validators grouping them by ranges, we can see how over the past three months, the top 10 validators holdings reduced from almost 60% of total staked NEAR to around 45%. On the other hand, power distribution of validators on Solana seems to vary a little bit more. In this case, Solana has more validators on the top. In this case the distribution is more heterogeneous what indicates a more healthy blockchian in terms of decentralization.
• 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 and 33% in the case of SOL. 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. On Solana, the Nakamoto coefficient has also icnreased from 13 to 29, which is a huge increase as well.

Key insights