Collators aggregate parachain transactions block candidates and producing state transition proofs for validators based on those blocks.

Acala is a specialized stablecoin and liquidity blockchain powered by Polkadot Relay chain.

ACA holders own and govern the protocol. Acala’s investors include Pantera Capital, Coinbase Ventures, and Polychain Capital.

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Acala Network

# Acala Network Block time Methodology

## 1. Overview

Block time measures the average time interval between consecutive blocks on the Acala blockchain, expressed in milliseconds and aggregated daily. This metric indicates the blockchain's block production rate and network performance. Acala is a Polkadot parachain focused on DeFi applications, and this metric helps assess the network's operational efficiency and consistency in block production.

## 2. Data sources

The calculation uses the following raw data source:

- **Acala blockchain data**: Native block data from the Acala network containing block numbers and timestamps for each block produced on the blockchain
- **Block metadata**: Each record includes the block timestamp (when the block was created) and block number (sequential identifier)

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Block data extraction and filtering
- **Purpose**: Extract valid block data from Acala blockchain while excluding invalid records
- **Logic**: The calculation starts by retrieving all block records from Acala blockchain data, specifically the `block_timestamp` and `block_number` fields. The genesis block (block number 0) is excluded because it carries an invalid timestamp set to the start of Unix time, which would skew block time calculations. For incremental updates, only recent blocks within the lookback period are processed to optimize performance.
- **Key fields**: `block_timestamp` (when each block was created), `block_number` (sequential block identifier starting from 1)

### Component B: Consecutive block pairing
- **Purpose**: Pair each block with its immediate predecessor to enable time difference calculations
- **Logic**: Using a lag window function ordered by block number, each block is paired with the timestamp of the previous block in the sequence. This creates pairs of consecutive blocks needed to calculate the time interval between block productions. Blocks without a previous timestamp (the first block after genesis) are excluded from further calculations.
- **Key fields**: `block_timestamp` (current block time), `previous_timestamp` (timestamp of the preceding block)

### Component C: Block time interval calculation
- **Purpose**: Calculate the actual time difference between consecutive blocks
- **Logic**: For each pair of consecutive blocks, the time difference is calculated in milliseconds using timestamp subtraction. Each calculated interval represents how long it took to produce one block after the previous one. The block timestamp is truncated to day boundaries to prepare for daily aggregation.
- **Key fields**: `block_time` (milliseconds between consecutive blocks), `timestamp` (day-truncated timestamp for grouping)

### Final aggregation
- **Combining components**: All block time intervals within each day are averaged to produce a single daily block time metric
- **Currency conversion**: Not applicable for this metric as it measures time intervals, not monetary values
- **Time aggregation**: Block times are grouped by calendar day using truncated timestamps, and the average of all block intervals within each day is calculated
- **Final calculation**: The daily average block time is computed by taking the mean of all individual block time intervals (in milliseconds) that occurred within each 24-hour period. The result represents the average time between consecutive blocks for that day on the Acala network.

*This methodology was automatically generated by Token Terminal's methodology analyzer.*

avg(block_timestamp - previous_block_timestamp)

Acala NetworkACA

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Block time

Block time

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