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 Median transaction fee Methodology

## 1. Overview

Median transaction fee measures the median fee paid across all transactions on the Cardano network. This metric identifies the typical cost incurred by a user for a single transaction, providing a representation of network affordability that is not skewed by extreme outliers, such as high-cost smart contract executions or low-cost simple transfers. Fees are initially captured in the network's native asset and converted to USD to provide a standardized view of transaction costs over time.

## 2. Data sources

- **Blockchain events**: Transactions covering Cardano
- **External data**: End-of-day price feeds for the native ADA asset

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Fee extraction and normalization

- **Purpose**: Retrieve and normalize raw fee data from the Cardano blockchain
- **Logic**: Fee values are extracted from every recorded transaction on the Cardano network. These values, originally denominated in Lovelace, are normalized to the native ADA asset by dividing by a factor of one million.
- **Key fields**: `fees` (transaction cost), `block_timestamp` (timing)

### Component B: USD conversion

- **Purpose**: Normalize transaction costs into a common currency for historical analysis
- **Logic**: Normalized fee amounts for each individual transaction are multiplied by the end-of-day price feed for the native ADA asset. This conversion is performed for every transaction before any aggregation occurs.
- **Key fields**: `fees` (ADA amount), `price_usd` (asset price)

### Component C: Median calculation and daily aggregation

- **Purpose**: Determine the middle-point fee value for each day
- **Logic**: Individual transaction fees, now denominated in USD, are grouped by day. The median value is determined by calculating the 50th percentile of all transaction fees within each 24-hour UTC window. This ensures that the final value represents the typical cost paid by users. Any days without transaction activity are filled with zeros to maintain a continuous data series.
- **Key fields**: `transaction_fee_median` (calculated 50th percentile), `timestamp` (daily window)

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

CardanoADA

Median transaction fee

Median transaction fee

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