This report presents an analysis of NEAR's progress towards decentralization. Among the relevant metrics analyzed are the number of participants (validators and delegators) over time as well as the distribution of staked NEAR. Finally, NEAR's decentralization is evaluated via the Nakamoto Coefficient, and is briefly compared to other blockchains.

The main goal of this dashboard is to outline an analysis and provide insights on NEAR's decentralization. As such, the commentary provided describe results and metrics at the time of writing (May 8, 2023). Nonetheless, it is still possible to refresh the dashboard to view the latest metrics like any other interactive dashboard.

Data Sources

This report primarily uses Flipside's NEAR tables for all charts and statistics. Validator metrics from NEAR Explorer and NEAR-Staking were also used for validation purposes.

Specific on-chain data points were extracted as described below:

• Validator staked balances. Sourced from Flipside's new fact_staking_pool_daily_balances table.
• Delegator staked balances. Extracted from staking transaction logs from near.core.fact_receipts.
• Block producers. Extracted from fact_blocks using the author field.
• Chunk-only producers. Derived from simulated data using validator proposals from fact_blocks and validator selection algorithm as coded here.
• Seat price. Derived from simulated data as described above.

⚠️ Please note that the number of chunk-only producers (and total validators) are slightly higher than actuals. This is caused by the unavailability of data on kicked-out validators which should be excluded in the simulated validator selection.

Metrics

The following metrics have been used to illustrate the level of decentralization of NEAR:

• Number of validators. Used to measure the number of active participants in securing and operating the NEAR ecosystem. The more validators, the more decentralized NEAR is.
• Number of delegators/stakers. Used to describe how many users are indirectly participating in securing the NEAR ecosystem by supporting their selected validators.
• Staking distribution. Shows how decentralized or not (concentrated) the actual stakes are between validators. This is largely driven by stakers' choice on which validators to delegate their tokens to.
• Nakamoto Coefficient. A common KPI of decentralization used in the industry. This is essentially a summary metric for staking distribution which counts the minimum number of validators it will take to halt the blockchain (combined stake exceeds 33.3% for NEAR).

This report was authored by @rmas and contributed to MetricsDAO and to the community in general. Feel free to fork and reference the source code behind the charts. Also, reach out on Twitter if you have any questions or would like to collaborate.