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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Kusama

# Kusama Average transaction fee Methodology

## 1. Overview

The Kusama average transaction fee metric measures the mean cost per transaction on the Kusama network on a daily basis. This metric is calculated by dividing the total daily transaction fees (in USD) by the total number of transactions executed that day. It provides insights into network usage patterns and fee market dynamics on Kusama, helping users understand the typical cost of transacting on the network.

## 2. Data sources

The calculation relies on three primary data sources:

- **Kusama extrinsics data**: Raw blockchain transaction records containing unique extrinsic identifiers and block timestamps for all transactions executed on the Kusama network
- **Kusama fee collection data**: Raw fee payment records capturing the total fees paid for transactions, denominated in KSM (Kusama's native token) with 12-decimal precision
- **External price data**: End-of-day price feeds from CoinGecko providing KSM-to-USD exchange rates for currency standardization

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Daily fee aggregation
- **Purpose**: Calculate total transaction fees paid on Kusama each day in USD
- **Logic**: Raw fee data is first processed to remove duplicate entries and convert KSM amounts from native 12-decimal precision to standard units by dividing by 10^12. The processed fees are then aggregated daily by summing all fee amounts. These daily KSM totals are converted to USD using end-of-day exchange rates from CoinGecko price feeds
- **Key fields**: `balance_amount_total` (raw KSM fee amounts), `timestamp` (transaction timing), converted `fees` (standardized KSM amounts)

### Component B: Daily transaction count
- **Purpose**: Count the total number of unique transactions executed on Kusama each day  
- **Logic**: Transaction data is extracted from Kusama extrinsics records, which contain unique identifiers for each transaction along with execution timestamps. The system counts distinct `extrinsic_id` values for each day to determine the total transaction volume, ensuring each transaction is counted exactly once
- **Key fields**: `extrinsic_id` (unique transaction identifier), `block_timestamp` (transaction execution time), `transaction_count` (daily aggregated count)

### Final aggregation
- **Combining components**: Daily fee totals (in USD) and daily transaction counts are joined by timestamp to create matched pairs of fees and volumes for each day
- **Currency conversion**: KSM fees are converted to USD using end-of-day exchange rates from CoinGecko, applied after daily KSM aggregation but before the final average calculation
- **Time aggregation**: All data is aggregated using daily boundaries based on UTC timestamp truncation to ensure consistent time grouping
- **Final calculation**: The average transaction fee is calculated using safe division of total daily fees (USD) by total daily transaction count, with zero-handling logic to manage days with no transactions. The result represents the mean cost per transaction in USD for that day

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

KusamaKSM

Average transaction fee

Average transaction fee

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