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Blockchains (L1)

Plasma

# Plasma Block time Methodology

## 1. Overview

Block time measures the average time interval between consecutive block productions on the Plasma blockchain, expressed in milliseconds and aggregated daily. This metric provides insight into the blockchain's performance consistency and network health by tracking how regularly new blocks are produced. The calculation uses consecutive block timestamps to determine production intervals and averages these across daily periods.

## 2. Data sources

- **Plasma blockchain data**: Raw block metadata including block numbers, timestamps, and miner information from the Plasma network
- **Block production records**: Sequential block creation data with precise timestamps for interval calculations

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Block data preparation
- **Purpose**: Extract and prepare block timestamp data for interval calculations
- **Logic**: Retrieves block timestamps and numbers from Plasma blockchain data, filtering out the genesis block (block 0) since it has an artificial timestamp that would skew calculations. A special correction is applied to fix the genesis block timestamp from Unix epoch (1970-01-01) to the actual Plasma blockchain launch time (2025-09-03 19:36:57 UTC) when needed for reference
- **Key fields**: `block_timestamp` (when the block was created), `block_number` (sequential block identifier)

### Component B: Timestamp pairing
- **Purpose**: Create pairs of consecutive block timestamps for interval calculation  
- **Logic**: Uses a LAG window function ordered by `block_number` to associate each block with its immediate predecessor's timestamp. This creates the data structure needed to calculate time intervals between consecutive blocks
- **Key fields**: `block_timestamp` (current block time), `previous_timestamp` (preceding block time), `block_number` (for ordering)

### Component C: Block interval calculation
- **Purpose**: Calculate the time difference between consecutive blocks
- **Logic**: Computes the millisecond difference between each block and its predecessor using timestamp difference functions. Filters out records where no previous timestamp exists (typically just the first block after genesis). Truncates timestamps to daily boundaries for aggregation
- **Key fields**: `timestamp` (daily boundary), `block_time` (interval in milliseconds)

### Final aggregation
- **Combining components**: Block intervals are grouped by day and averaged to produce daily mean block times
- **Currency conversion**: Not applicable for this time-based metric
- **Time aggregation**: Daily boundaries are established using timestamp truncation, with all block intervals within each day averaged together
- **Final calculation**: The daily average block time is calculated by taking the mean of all block-to-block intervals within each day, measured in milliseconds. The result includes metadata fields identifying this as a Plasma blockchain metric in the L1 blockchains market sector

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

avg(block_timestamp - previous_block_timestamp)

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Block time

Block time

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