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 Block time Methodology

## 1. Overview

Block time measures the average time it takes for a new block to be added to the blockchain. It reflects the speed at which the network processes transactions and updates its state. This metric is utilized to monitor the operational efficiency and latency of the Cardano network's consensus mechanism over time.

## 2. Data sources

- **Blockchain events**: Block headers and sequence data from the Cardano blockchain
- **External data**: None directly consumed for this metric

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Block sequence identification

- **Purpose**: Establish a temporal record of block production
- **Logic**: Block sequence numbers and their associated UTC timestamps are retrieved from the ledger. This data serves as the foundation for determining the chronological order of block additions.
- **Key fields**: `timestamp`, `number`

### Component B: Block interval calculation

- **Purpose**: Determine the duration between consecutive blocks
- **Logic**: The temporal difference between each block and its immediate predecessor is calculated in milliseconds. Only blocks with a valid preceding block timestamp are included to ensure calculation accuracy.
- **Key fields**: `block_timestamp`, `previous_timestamp`

### Component C: Daily aggregation and normalization

- **Purpose**: Derive a representative average for each reporting period
- **Logic**: All calculated block intervals are aggregated into 24-hour windows based on UTC day boundaries. An arithmetic mean is applied to the intervals within each day to determine the average block time. The final values are cast to floating-point numbers and gaps in the time series are zero-filled to maintain data continuity.
- **Key fields**: `timestamp`, `block_time`

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

avg(block_timestamp - previous_block_timestamp)

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Block time

Block time

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