CoW Protocol batches trades and auctions them between public and private liquidity sources. It aims to achieve better prices than other exchanges by matching trades via Coincidences of Wants (CoWs) and protecting from MEV.

CoW Protocol is a meta-DEX aggregation protocol that acts as a batch settlement layer on top of all other AMMs & DEX aggregators. CoW Protocol is a spin off from Gnosis DAO that launched in February 2021.

COW tokenholders own and govern the protocol. They currently take a cut of the total trading fees paid by traders (revenue).

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DEX aggregators

CoW Protocol

# CoW Protocol Token holders Methodology

## 1. Overview

Token holders measures the number of unique addresses that hold a non-zero balance of the CoW Protocol native asset (COW). This metric is used to track the growth and distribution of the protocol's holder base over time. By monitoring the expansion of unique addresses, investors can assess the adoption and decentralization of the asset across different blockchain ecosystems.

## 2. Data sources

- **Blockchain events**: ERC-20 token transfers covering Ethereum, Gnosis, Arbitrum, Base, and 2 other chains
- **External data**: Asset metadata for identifying native asset contract addresses and historical launch dates

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Transfer event extraction

- **Purpose**: Capture all movements of the native asset to identify potential holders.
- **Logic**: ERC-20 token transfers are parsed for specific contract addresses associated with the CoW Protocol asset across all supported chains. Inflows are identified as transfers to an address, while outflows are identified as transfers from an address. Transfers involving the null address or the asset contract address itself are excluded to ensure the metric reflects the circulating supply held by external participants.
- **Key fields**: `from_address`, `to_address`, `value`, and `block_timestamp`.

### Component B: Daily balance calculation

- **Purpose**: Determine the historical balance for every unique address on a daily basis.
- **Logic**: Net daily flows are calculated by summing inflows and outflows for each address. A cumulative balance is then generated for every address by aggregating these daily flows over time. A daily timestamp spine is utilized to fill gaps between transfer events, ensuring that the last known balance for an address is carried forward for every day until a subsequent transfer occurs.
- **Key fields**: `address`, `timestamp`, and `amount`.

### Component C: Unique holder aggregation

- **Purpose**: Count the total number of addresses with a positive balance.
- **Logic**: The number of unique addresses with a balance strictly greater than zero is counted for each day. These counts are aggregated by chain and timestamp to provide a daily time series of the total holder base. The final values are normalized to ensure data consistency across all supported chains.
- **Key fields**: `balance` and `timestamp`.

*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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