Try Quests to earn cryptoDelegation Duration of Terra Delegators
This dashboard attempts to analyze the behavior of Terra delegators by the duration of their delegations.
These graphs collectively show that the more LUNA delegated, the less discernible the pattern is. For example, comparing the whale graph to the most popular undelegation date graph, we can see similar patterns, while the pattern gradually becomes unclear as the status went from whale to shrimp. In plankton's case, the pattern is nowhere to be found. What this means is that, the more a person delegates, the more sensitive they are to LUNA events, such as price action and new protocols.
- Median delegation duration is a better indicator for delegation duration.
- The delegation duration is slightly over 27 days before a redelegation/undelegation event occurs.
- There are popular dates where mass redelegation/undelegation occur, namely Feb 8, March 17, May 5, and June 30.
- Mass redelegation/undelegation cycle lasts around 40-50 days since Jan 2021.
- Whales are more affected by LUNA events, such as price action and new protocols, than planktons.
Et voila! Immediately upon plotting this graph, a conspicuous pattern appeared. Upon analyzing the pattern, we can see that there is a cycle between delegations and undelegations starting from Jan 2021, where each cycle last around 40 - 50 days. From the graph, we also know that there are dates where large numbers of delegators undelegate/redelegate at the same time, namely Feb 8, March 17, May 5, and June 30. The last triangle is not included as there is no indicator that it's the end of a cycle (a spike upwards in the number of days).
A similar story can be told when we compare it with the graphs created by undelegation date. For these graphs, the inverse happened, where initially the delegation duration is low because there isn't enough time passed for the long term delegators to undelegate/redelegate, while the later parts of the graph show increased durations once enough time had passed.
The median graph, however, shows much more volatile durations. In the graph, we see that the median is about 662 hours, or about 27 days, almost half of what we see on the average graph. This difference shows that there are many outliers that skew the data into showing a much higher duration than it actually is. So, it's better to judge delegation durations by median instead of average.
To find out the delegation duration of the delegators, the delegation times and undelegation times of each delegator to the respective validators are found out. The difference between the two is then found out. Note that the delegation times are specific to the delegated validators. For example, if a user delegated to two validators at the same time and redelegate/undelegate from the validators at different times, the user will have two different delegation durations respective to the validators. The average and median of these delegation durations are then calculated based on the delegation dates and the undelegation dates as shown in the graphs below.
The graphs below use the logic as the graph above, where whales are defined as wallets with more than 100000 LUNA delegated at the time of delegation, dolphins between 1000 and 100000 LUNA, shrimps between 10 and 1000 LUNA, and planktons less than 10 LUNA.
Even though the averages and medians show what is happening generally on specific dates, there are no discernible trends or patterns on the graphs. If we based our conclusions on these graphs, we only know how long does the average delegator delegate to a validator. Are there no external factors that hinder the wills of these delegators to continue delegating? So, that got me thinking that these graphs don't tell the whole story. To go deeper down the road of finding a pattern, the most popular dates by count that people undelegate their LUNA based on their delegation dates are found out. The graph is plotted using the difference between the delegation dates to their respective most popular undelegation date.
Based on the delegation date graphs, we can see that the average and median duration tell two different stories. On average, delegators delegate about 1.1k hours, which is about 45 days, before redelegating/undelegating. The later parts of the graph show that the average duration went down, which is reasonable as there is simply not enough time passed for those who wish to delegate for a longer period.
Terra relies on delegators and validators to keep the network secure, where delegators are users that delegated any amount of LUNA to validators while validators are the ones who sign and verify blocks. With that said, there is a cost in keeping the network secure. For validators, it's the equipment needed to keep the node online 24/7 while for delegators, it's time and illiquidity which further translates to opportunity costs. While there are incentives to keep the delegators delegating, there are times when undelegations/redelegations are required. This dashboard shows how long does an average person delegate before they undelegate/redelegate to another validator.