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

Flow is a smart contract platform for decentralized applications (a blockchain). Flow was founded by Roham Gharegozlou, Dieter Shirley and Mikhael Naayem and launched in 2019.

FLOW holders own and govern the protocol. They currently don’t take a cut of the total transaction fees paid by users (revenue). Flow’s investors include a16z, Coatue, Coinfund, Fabric Ventures, etc.

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Blockchains (L1)

Flow

# Flow Block time Methodology

## 1. Overview

Flow EVM block time measures the average time interval between consecutive blocks on the Flow EVM blockchain, expressed in milliseconds and aggregated daily. This metric provides insight into the blockchain's performance and consistency of block production. The calculation analyzes the time differences between consecutive blocks and averages these intervals on a daily basis to show how efficiently the Flow EVM network processes blocks over time.

## 2. Data sources

The calculation relies on the following raw data sources:

- **Flow EVM blockchain blocks**: Raw block header data from the Flow EVM blockchain containing block timestamps and sequential block numbers
- **Flow blockchain node data**: Block production data captured directly from Flow EVM blockchain nodes that track when each block was mined and added to the chain

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Block data extraction
- **Purpose**: Extracts basic block information needed for time interval calculations
- **Logic**: Retrieves block timestamps and block numbers from Flow EVM blockchain data. Filters out the genesis block (block number 0) as it has an artificial timestamp at the start of Unix time that would skew calculations. Casts timestamp and number fields to proper data types to ensure accurate calculations
- **Key fields**: `block_timestamp` (when the block was mined), `block_number` (sequential block identifier)

### Component B: Consecutive block pairing
- **Purpose**: Pairs each block with its immediate predecessor to enable time difference calculations
- **Logic**: Uses a LAG window function to retrieve the previous block's timestamp for each block, ordered by block number in ascending order. This creates pairs of consecutive blocks where each block has access to both its own timestamp and the timestamp of the block that came before it
- **Key fields**: `block_timestamp` (current block time), `previous_timestamp` (previous block time), `block_number` (for ordering)

### Component C: Block time interval calculation
- **Purpose**: Calculates the actual time elapsed between consecutive blocks
- **Logic**: Computes the time difference between each block's timestamp and its predecessor's timestamp in milliseconds. Filters out any records where the previous timestamp is null (which occurs for the first block since it has no predecessor). Truncates block timestamps to daily boundaries to prepare for daily aggregation
- **Key fields**: `block_time` (milliseconds between consecutive blocks), `timestamp` (daily boundary)

### Component D: Daily aggregation
- **Purpose**: Aggregates individual block times into daily averages
- **Logic**: Groups block time intervals by day and calculates the average block time across all blocks produced on each day. Assigns standardized metadata fields including chain identifier (`Flow EVM`), market sector (`blockchains_l1`), business segment (`blockchain`), and product identifier (`Flow EVM`)
- **Key fields**: `timestamp` (daily date), `block_time` (average milliseconds per block for that day)

### Final aggregation
- **Combining components**: The daily block time averages flow through the `finalize_metric_block_time` macro which applies standardized formatting and metadata
- **Currency conversion**: Not applicable for this time-based metric
- **Time aggregation**: Daily boundaries are applied by truncating block timestamps to the day level, and all blocks within each day are averaged together
- **Final calculation**: The final metric represents the average time in milliseconds between consecutive blocks for each day, providing a daily view of Flow EVM blockchain performance and block production consistency

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

avg(block_timestamp - previous_block_timestamp)

FlowFLOW

Block time

Block time

Competitive landscape

Chain breakdown