In order to bring determinism to the oracle layer, Chainlink has developed a network of decentralized oracle networks (DONs), with each DON involving a combination of multiple security techniques needed to service a particular use case.
The Chainlink stack supports multiple open standards for designing and operating oracle services, which currently span four key verticals: 1) Data, 2) Interoperability, 3) Compliance, and 4) Privacy. Built upon these standards exists an ever-expanding collection of modular, purpose-built oracle services, which can be easily created and seamlessly composed using the Chainlink Runtime Environment (CRE). CRE is a developer platform and decentralized execution environment for running, managing, and composing oracle services into scalable end-to-end solutions, which run in a highly secure, reliable, and cryptographically verifiable manner.

Chainlink is the industry-standard oracle platform bringing the capital markets onchain and powering the majority of decentralized finance (DeFi). The Chainlink stack provides the essential data, interoperability, compliance, and privacy standards needed to power advanced blockchain use cases for institutional tokenized assets, lending, payments, stablecoins, and more. Since inventing decentralized oracle networks, Chainlink has enabled tens of trillions in transaction value and now secures the vast majority of DeFi. 
Many of the world’s largest financial services institutions have also adopted Chainlink’s standards and infrastructure, including Swift, Euroclear, Mastercard, Fidelity International, UBS, ANZ, and top protocols such as Aave, GMX, Lido, and many others. Chainlink leverages a novel fee model where offchain and onchain revenue from enterprise adoption is converted to LINK tokens and stored in a strategic Chainlink Reserve. Learn more at chain.link.

Chainlink is not a governance protocol. Chainlink is an open-sourced platform of standards developers leverage to build next-generation onchain applications. It is developed and maintained by Chainlink Labs and a broader community of contributors. While there is no onchain token-based governance like in some DeFi protocols, the direction of the protocol is guided by core developers, researchers, and ecosystem partners, with feedback from the community.

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# Token holders Methodology

## Overview

Token holders measures the number of unique addresses that hold a non-zero balance of a project’s native token. Investors use this metric to track the growth of the token’s holder base over time.

## Data sources

- Blockchain state data and account balance snapshots
- On-chain events and program instructions capturing balance modifications
- Asset metadata for decimal normalization and chain identification
- End-of-day price feeds for USD conversion

## Common calculation approaches

### Snapshot-based balance tracking
Daily snapshots of account balances are extracted from blockchain state data to identify unique addresses with positive holdings. This method is utilized for networks including Ethereum and Tron, where end-of-day state records are used to verify the distribution of the native asset across all active addresses.

### Transaction and instruction analysis
Token holder counts are reconstructed by analyzing balance changes generated by native transfers and contract interactions. For example, on Solana, program instructions are monitored to maintain a running record of addresses with non-zero balances, ensuring that only accounts with holdings exceeding network storage requirements are included.

### UTXO-based state reconstruction
Address balances are determined by analyzing Unspent Transaction Outputs (UTXOs) from block records. This approach is applied to Bitcoin to identify the total number of unique addresses that maintain a positive balance based on the current set of unspent outputs.

### Staked and liquid balance integration
Both liquid and staked token balances are combined to provide a comprehensive count of unique holders. This pattern is seen on NEAR Protocol, where balance modifications for both liquid accounts and staking validators are aggregated to ensure all participants with an economic interest are captured.

**Note:** The calculation approaches and protocol examples above are representative patterns. Individual protocol implementations may vary.

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

Unique addresses holding a non-zero balance of the project's native token.

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