Validators process transactions and receive fees from users (supply-side fees).

Aptos is a smart contract platform for decentralized applications (a blockchain). Aptos was founded by Mo Shaikh and Avery Ching and launched in 2022.

APT token holders own and govern the protocol. They currently don’t take a cut of the total transaction fees paid by users (revenue). Aptos’ investors include Binance Labs, Jump Crypto, Apollo, etc.

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# Aptos Median transaction fee Methodology

## 1. Overview

The Aptos transaction fee median metric calculates the daily median transaction fee paid by users on the Aptos blockchain, expressed in USD. This metric provides insight into the typical cost of transacting on Aptos by finding the middle value of all transaction fees paid each day. The calculation involves extracting gas usage data from Aptos transactions, computing individual transaction fees in native APT tokens, calculating daily medians, and converting to USD using daily exchange rates.

## 2. Data sources

The calculation relies on three primary data sources:

- **Aptos blockchain transaction records**: Raw transaction data from the Aptos blockchain containing gas usage information, transaction hashes, senders, timestamps, and gas pricing details
- **Chainlink price feeds**: Real-time APT/USD price data from Chainlink oracle feeds (feed address `0x88a98431c25329aa422b21d147c1518b34dd36f4`) available from August 10, 2023 onwards
- **CoinGecko historical price data**: Historical daily APT price data from CoinGecko (coingecko_id: 'aptos') used to backfill prices before Chainlink feeds became available

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Raw transaction processing
- **Purpose**: Extract and normalize transaction gas data from Aptos blockchain records
- **Logic**: The system processes raw Aptos transaction data by extracting key fields including block timestamps, transaction hashes, senders, `gas_used`, and `gas_unit_price`. A special handling rule applies genesis timestamp correction for transactions that occurred before 2000-01-01, setting their timestamp to '2022-10-12 00:00:00 UTC' to represent the Aptos mainnet genesis. The `gas_unit_price` field undergoes normalization by dividing by 10^8 to convert from integer representation to proper decimal format accounting for APT's 8 decimal places.
- **Key fields**: `block_timestamp` (transaction timing), `gas_used` (computational resources consumed), `gas_unit_price` (price per unit of gas in APT), `transaction_hash` (unique identifier), `sender` (transaction initiator)

### Component B: Individual transaction fee calculation
- **Purpose**: Calculate the fee paid for each individual transaction in native APT tokens
- **Logic**: For each processed transaction, the system calculates the total fee by multiplying `gas_used` by the normalized `gas_unit_price`. If either value is null or missing, the fee defaults to zero to handle edge cases. This produces individual transaction fees denominated in APT tokens with proper decimal precision.
- **Key fields**: `fee_amount` (calculated as gas_used × gas_unit_price), `block_timestamp` (for temporal grouping)

### Component C: Daily median calculation
- **Purpose**: Compute the median transaction fee for each day
- **Logic**: Transactions are grouped by day using timestamp truncation to daily boundaries. For each day, the system calculates the median fee amount using the `approx_quantiles` function with 100 quantiles, selecting the 50th percentile (median value). This approach efficiently handles large transaction volumes while providing an accurate representation of typical transaction costs.
- **Key fields**: `timestamp` (daily boundary), `transaction_fee_median` (median fee in APT)

### Component D: APT price data compilation
- **Purpose**: Provide comprehensive daily APT/USD exchange rates across all time periods
- **Logic**: The system combines APT price data from two sources to ensure complete coverage. For dates from August 10, 2023 onwards, it uses real-time Chainlink oracle price feeds from the specified feed address. For earlier dates, it uses historical daily market data from CoinGecko with the 'aptos' identifier. This hybrid approach ensures price availability across the entire Aptos blockchain history.
- **Key fields**: `timestamp` (daily price date), `price` (APT/USD exchange rate)

### Final aggregation
- **Combining components**: Daily median transaction fees in APT are joined with daily APT prices on matching timestamps to enable currency conversion
- **Currency conversion**: Median fees are converted from APT to USD by multiplying the `transaction_fee_median` (in APT) by the daily `price` (APT/USD exchange rate)
- **Time aggregation**: All calculations maintain daily granularity with timestamps truncated to day boundaries
- **Final calculation**: The final metric value represents the median transaction fee paid on Aptos for each day, expressed in USD terms, with standardization applied through the finalize metric macro and chain availability filtering

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

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Median transaction fee

Median transaction fee

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