Validators process transactions and receive validator rewards (supply-side fees).

NEAR Protocol is a smart contract platform for decentralized applications (a blockchain). NEAR Protocol was founded by Alexander Skidanov & Ilya Polosukhin and launched in 2017.

NEAR holders own and govern the protocol. They currently take (burn) all of the total transaction fees paid by users (revenue). NEAR Protocol's investors include a16z, Pantera Capital, Libertus, etc.

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NEAR Protocol

# near Number Of Validators Methodology

## 1. Overview

Number Of Validators is defined as the total count of unique entities actively participating in the consensus and security of Near. Active validators are identified by the presence of a staked balance greater than zero on the network. This metric serves as a primary indicator of network decentralization and the distribution of security responsibilities across the validator set.

## 2. Data sources

- **Blockchain events**: Account state changes and receipt data from Near
- **External data**: Asset metadata for decimal normalization

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Account state change extraction

- **Purpose**: Capture historical balance updates for all accounts across the network.
- **Logic**: Account state changes are parsed and joined with execution receipts to identify the specific accounts affected by network activity. Both non-staked and staked balance fields are extracted for every affected account address to establish a comprehensive history of balance movements.
- **Key fields**: `affected_account_nonstaked_balance`, `affected_account_staked_balance`, and `affected_account_id`.

### Component B: Balance normalization and state persistence

- **Purpose**: Ensure account balances are accurately represented and continuous across all time periods.
- **Logic**: Raw balance values are normalized by decimal precision. Since account state is only recorded in the underlying ledger when a change occurs, missing daily data points are generated via forward-filling using the last known balance for each account to maintain a continuous record of state.

### Component C: Validator identification and daily aggregation

- **Purpose**: Quantify the active validator set based on economic stake.
- **Logic**: Accounts are filtered to include only those addresses where the staked balance is greater than zero for a given day. A distinct count of these account addresses is then performed to determine the total number of validators. Data is aggregated with daily granularity using UTC day boundaries.
- **Key fields**: `account_address` and `staked_balance`.

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

Number of active validators securing the network.

NEAR ProtocolNEAR

Number of validators

Number of validators

Competitive landscape