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

Astar is a collective driving web3 adoption by connecting people through blockchain technology, business innovation, decentralized applications, and seamless digital experiences in the Polkadot ecosystem. Astar was founded by Sota Watanabe and launched in 2021.

ASTR tokenholders own and govern the protocol. Part of the transaction fees is burned (revenue). Astar’s investors include Binance, Polychain Capital, Crypto.com, etc.

website

twitter

github

discord

Blockchains (L2)

Astar

# Astar Fees Methodology

## 1. Overview

This metric calculates the total daily transaction fees generated by the Astar network, expressed in USD. Astar operates as a dual-layer blockchain with both substrate-based Layer 1 functionality and EVM-compatible Layer 2 capabilities. The calculation captures fees from both layers by analyzing different types of blockchain events and combining them into a unified daily fee total. This metric answers how much revenue the network generates from transaction processing across both execution environments.

## 2. Data sources

- **Astar blockchain events**: Raw event logs from the Astar blockchain, specifically from the `transactionPayment`, `ethereum`, and `balances` pallets
- **Transaction payment events**: Layer 1 substrate transaction fee events containing transaction fees and tips
- **EVM execution events**: Layer 2 ethereum pallet events tracking EVM transaction executions and their associated signers
- **Balance operation events**: Withdrawal and deposit events from the balances pallet that represent EVM transaction fee payments
- **External price data**: End-of-day price feeds for ASTAR token from CoinGecko API

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Raw event processing
- **Purpose**: Extract and standardize Astar blockchain events for fee calculation
- **Logic**: Process raw Astar blockchain event logs, truncating timestamps to daily boundaries and filtering for specific pallet operations. Events are partitioned by day for efficient incremental processing with a configurable lookback period for data consistency.
- **Key fields**: `timestamp`, `block_number`, `event_index`, `event_data`, `event_method`, `event_pallet`, `extrinsic_id`, `success`

### Component B: Layer 1 substrate fees
- **Purpose**: Calculate fees from native substrate transactions on Astar Layer 1
- **Logic**: Filter events for `transactionPayment` pallet with `TransactionFeePaid` method. Parse the `event_data` JSON array to extract `transaction_fee` from position 1 and `transaction_tip` from position 2. Sum these components together to get total L1 fees per transaction. Convert amounts from 18-decimal native units to standard decimal representation by dividing by 10^18.
- **Key fields**: `transaction_fee`, `transaction_tip`, `extrinsic_id`, `timestamp`

### Component C: Layer 2 EVM fee identification
- **Purpose**: Identify EVM transactions and their associated signers for L2 fee calculation
- **Logic**: Extract `ethereum` pallet `Executed` events to identify which extrinsics represent EVM transactions and capture the signer address from position 0 of the event data. This creates a mapping between extrinsic IDs and the addresses that initiated EVM transactions.
- **Key fields**: `signer_address`, `extrinsic_id`, normalized to lowercase for consistent matching

### Component D: Layer 2 EVM fees
- **Purpose**: Calculate actual fees paid for EVM transactions through balance operations
- **Logic**: Extract `balances` pallet events with `Withdraw` and `Deposit` methods that occur within `ethereum` pallet context. Parse fee amounts from position 1 of event data, treating withdrawals as positive fees and deposits as negative (refunds). Match these balance operations with EVM transaction signers by `extrinsic_id` and verify the address performing the balance operation matches the original signer. Sum all balance changes per extrinsic to get net fees, then convert from 18-decimal units.
- **Key fields**: `transaction_fee` (positive for withdrawals, negative for deposits), `signer_address`, `event_method`

### Component E: Fee combination and classification
- **Purpose**: Combine Layer 1 and Layer 2 fees into a unified dataset
- **Logic**: Union the L1 substrate fees and L2 EVM fees with consistent schema. All fees are tagged with `product_id` as 'Astar Substrate' and `chain_id` corresponding to their respective layer ('astar' for L1, 'astarevm' for L2). Maintain daily timestamp granularity for aggregation.
- **Key fields**: `fees`, `chain_id`, `product_id`, `timestamp_grain`

### Final aggregation
- **Combining components**: Union all fee types into a single dataset with consistent schema and daily timestamps
- **Currency conversion**: Convert ASTAR token fees to USD using end-of-day price feeds from CoinGecko, applying the `convert_to_usd_cg` macro with 'astar' as the token identifier
- **Time aggregation**: Fees are already aggregated to daily boundaries through timestamp truncation during initial event processing
- **Final calculation**: Apply the `finalize_metric_fees` macro with 'fill_zeros' strategy to ensure complete time series data, then filter results based on chain availability configuration to include only supported chains in the final output

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

Total value users pay to use a protocol (gross fees, user-paid fees).

AstarASTR

Fees

Fees

Competitive landscape

Chain breakdown