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

Kusama is a security & interoperability platform for blockchains and applications. Kusama was founded by Gavin Wood and launched in 2019.

KSM holders own and govern the protocol. They currently take a cut of the total transaction fees paid by users (revenue).

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Blockchains (L1)

Kusama

# Kusama Fees Methodology

## 1. Overview

Kusama fees represent the total daily transaction fees collected by the Kusama blockchain network. This metric captures both base transaction fees and optional tips paid by users for transaction processing. The calculation aggregates all `TransactionFeePaid` events from the Kusama blockchain on a daily basis, converting amounts from raw blockchain units to KSM tokens and then to USD for standardized reporting.

## 2. Data sources

- **Kusama blockchain events**: Raw blockchain event logs from the Kusama network, specifically `TransactionFeePaid` events that record fee payments for transaction processing
- **End-of-day price feeds**: CoinGecko price data for KSM token to enable USD conversion
- **Token metadata**: KSM token configuration including decimal precision (1e12) and CoinGecko identifier

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Fee event extraction
- **Purpose**: Extract and parse individual transaction fee payments from Kusama blockchain events
- **Logic**: Filter Kusama blockchain events for `TransactionFeePaid` event method. Parse the `event_data` JSON array to extract fee components: position [1] contains the base transaction fee amount, and position [2] contains the optional tip amount. Include transaction identifiers like `block_timestamp`, `block_number`, `extrinsic_hash`, and `event_index` for tracking.
- **Key fields**: `amount` (base fee), `tip` (optional additional payment), `block_timestamp`, `extrinsic_hash`

### Component B: Decimal conversion and fee totaling  
- **Purpose**: Convert raw blockchain units to standard KSM token amounts and calculate total fees per transaction
- **Logic**: Divide both `amount` and `tip` values by 1e12 (KSM decimal precision) to convert from raw blockchain units to KSM tokens. Sum the converted `amount` and `tip` values for each transaction to get the total fee paid per transaction, handling null values by treating them as zero.
- **Key fields**: Converted `amount` and `tip` in KSM units, total `fees` per transaction

### Component C: Daily aggregation
- **Purpose**: Aggregate individual transaction fees into daily totals
- **Logic**: Group all fee events by day using `timestamp_trunc` on `block_timestamp`. Sum all transaction fees within each day to get the total daily fees collected by the Kusama network. Include metadata fields like `chain` (kusama), `token_symbol` (KSM), and `coingecko_id` (kusama).
- **Key fields**: Daily `timestamp`, total daily `fees` in KSM, `token_symbol`, `coingecko_id`

### Final aggregation
- **Combining components**: The daily aggregated fees from Component C flow directly into the final metric calculation
- **Currency conversion**: Convert KSM amounts to USD using end-of-day CoinGecko prices through the `convert_to_usd_cg` macro
- **Time aggregation**: Daily boundaries are maintained throughout the calculation, with timestamps truncated to day precision
- **Final calculation**: The final metric represents the total USD value of all transaction fees (base fees plus tips) collected by the Kusama blockchain each day, classified under the 'Blockchain' business line and 'blockchains_l1' market sector

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

Total value users pay to use a protocol (gross fees, user-paid fees).

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Fees

Fees

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