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).

github

twitter

discord

etherscan

website

Blockchains (L1)

Kusama

# Kusama Token holders Methodology

## 1. Overview

The Kusama tokenholders metric measures the total number of unique addresses holding KSM tokens on the Kusama blockchain at daily intervals. This metric provides insight into the distribution and adoption of the native Kusama token, tracking how many distinct addresses maintain KSM balances over time. The calculation uses daily snapshots of token holder counts sourced from external scraping systems that analyze the Kusama blockchain state.

## 2. Data sources

- **Kusama blockchain data**: External scraping system that analyzes the Kusama blockchain to identify all addresses holding KSM tokens
- **Daily snapshots**: Pre-aggregated daily counts of unique addresses with non-zero KSM balances
- **Token holder tracking**: System that monitors changes in KSM token distribution across addresses on the Kusama network

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Raw token holder data extraction
- **Purpose**: Extract daily counts of unique KSM token holders from external scraping systems
- **Logic**: Pull daily snapshots from the Kusama scraper source containing timestamp and token holder count data. Each record represents the total number of unique addresses holding KSM tokens on a specific date.
- **Key fields**: `timestamp` for the snapshot date, `amount` field containing the count of unique token holders

### Component B: Data standardization
- **Purpose**: Convert raw scraper data into standardized format for metric processing
- **Logic**: Transform the raw token holder counts by casting the `amount` field to high-precision numeric format and renaming to `tokenholders`. Add constant identifiers including chain name as 'kusama', token symbol as 'KSM', and timestamp grain as 'day' to ensure consistent metadata across the dataset.
- **Key fields**: `tokenholders` (standardized count), `chain` (kusama), `token_symbol` (KSM), `timestamp_grain` (day)

### Final aggregation
- **Combining components**: The standardized token holder data flows through the finalize metric macro which applies Token Terminal's standard formatting and validation rules for tokenholder metrics
- **Currency conversion**: Not applicable - this metric represents a count of addresses rather than a monetary value
- **Time aggregation**: Data is already aggregated at daily boundaries from the source scraping system
- **Final calculation**: The final metric value represents the exact count of unique addresses holding KSM tokens on each day, with chain availability filtering applied to ensure data quality and availability requirements are met

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

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

KusamaKSM

Token holders

Token holders

Competitive landscape