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

Cardano is a smart contract platform for decentralized applications (a blockchain). Cardano was founded by Charles Hoskinson & Jeremy Wood and launched in 2017.

ADA holders own and govern the protocol. They currently do not take a cut of the total transaction fees paid by users (revenue).

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Cardano

# Cardano Average fees per user (AFPU) Methodology

## 1. Overview

Average fees per user (AFPU) for Cardano measures the mean transaction expenditure incurred by a unique active user on the network over a 24-hour period. This metric reflects the average cost of utilizing the blockchain's services for an individual participant. It is calculated by dividing the total daily fee volume by the count of active users (daily), providing a standardized view of network affordability and economic activity.

## 2. Data sources

- **Fees**: Derived from the Fees metric
- **Active users (daily)**: Derived from the Active users (daily) metric
- **Blockchain events**: Transaction data and UTXO input records covering Cardano
- **External data**: End-of-day price feeds for the native asset

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Fee extraction and normalization

- **Purpose**: Captures the total transaction costs paid by users in the native asset.
- **Logic**: Fees are extracted from transaction records. Since these values are natively stored in lovelace, amounts are normalized by decimal precision (divided by 1,000,000) to be expressed in the native asset (ADA).
- **Key fields**: `fees` (in lovelace), `block_timestamp`.

### Component B: Active user identification

- **Purpose**: Identifies the unique number of participants initiating transactions.
- **Logic**: Transaction sender addresses are identified by parsing the `inputs` array within UTXO (Unspent Transaction Output) records. Each distinct address that appears as an input in a transaction is designated as an active user. These addresses are aggregated into a daily count to establish the active users (daily) metric.
- **Key fields**: `address` (parsed from the `inputs` array), `block_timestamp`.

### Component C: USD conversion and AFPU derivation

- **Purpose**: Standardizes the final average value into USD for cross-asset comparison.
- **Logic**: Daily native fees are multiplied by end-of-day price feeds to determine the total USD fee volume. The final average fees per user (AFPU) value is calculated by dividing this total daily fee volume by the distinct count of active users (daily) for the corresponding UTC day.
- **Key fields**: `total_fees_ada`, `user_dau`, `price_usd`.

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

CardanoADA

Average fees per user (AFPU)

Average fees per user (AFPU)

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