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Blockchains (L1)

Plasma

# Plasma Fees Methodology

## 1. Overview

The plasma fees metric measures the total daily transaction fees generated on the Plasma blockchain. This metric captures the complete cost paid by users for transaction execution, combining both base fees (which are burned and removed from circulation) and priority fees (which are paid to validators as rewards). The calculation follows the EIP-1559 fee model used by Plasma, providing insights into network usage, congestion, and economic activity. The metric answers the business question: "How much total value in fees is generated daily by the Plasma network?"

## 2. Data sources

The calculation relies on several core data sources:

- **Plasma blockchain transaction records**: Raw transaction data containing gas usage metrics, effective gas prices, sender and receiver addresses, and execution timestamps
- **Plasma blockchain block headers**: Block-level data containing base fee per gas values required for EIP-1559 fee calculations
- **End-of-day token price feeds**: External price data for converting native XPL token amounts to USD values
- **Token metadata**: Hardcoded information about the native XPL token including contract address and symbol details

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Transaction data preparation
- **Purpose**: Extract and standardize raw transaction and block data from the Plasma blockchain
- **Logic**: Raw transaction records are filtered and cast to appropriate data types, capturing essential fields like `gas_used`, `effective_gas_price`, `from_address`, `to_address`, and `block_timestamp`. Block header data is similarly processed to extract `base_fee_per_gas` values. The transaction data is joined with block data using `block_number` as the key, ensuring each transaction has the corresponding base fee information needed for EIP-1559 calculations. The native XPL token address and symbol are hardcoded as `0x6100e367285b01f48d07953803a2d8dca5d19873` and `XPL` respectively.
- **Key fields**: `gas_used` (computational units consumed), `effective_gas_price` (total price per gas unit paid), `base_fee_per_gas` (network-set minimum fee per gas unit), `block_timestamp` (transaction execution time), `token_address` (native token identifier)

### Component B: Daily fee aggregation  
- **Purpose**: Calculate base fees and priority fees for each day using EIP-1559 methodology
- **Logic**: For each transaction, base fees are calculated by multiplying `gas_used` by `base_fee_per_gas`, representing the portion of fees that are burned. Priority fees are calculated by multiplying `gas_used` by the difference between `effective_gas_price` and `base_fee_per_gas`, representing the portion paid to validators as tips. Both fee components are converted from wei to token units by dividing by 1e18. Daily aggregation is performed by truncating `block_timestamp` to day boundaries and grouping by date, `token_address`, and `chain`. The results are summed to produce daily totals for `base_fee` and `priority_fee`.
- **Key fields**: `base_fee` (daily burned fees in token units), `priority_fee` (daily validator fees in token units), `timestamp` (truncated to day), `chain` (blockchain identifier)

### Component C: USD conversion and standardization
- **Purpose**: Convert token-denominated fees to USD and apply metric schema standardization
- **Logic**: The sum of `base_fee` and `priority_fee` is calculated to produce total daily fees in native token units. This total is converted to USD using end-of-day price feeds through the convert_to_usd_and_correct_decimals macro, which handles both currency conversion and decimal precision adjustments. The chain identifier is recast from the raw 'plasma' value to the standardized 'plasma' format for consistency across metrics.
- **Key fields**: `fees` (total daily fees in USD), `chain_id` (standardized chain identifier), `timestamp_grain` (set to 'day'), `token_address` (native token address)

### Final aggregation
- **Combining components**: Base fees and priority fees are summed together to calculate total transaction fees, representing the complete cost paid by users for network usage
- **Currency conversion**: USD conversion is performed using end-of-day price feeds for the XPL token, ensuring consistent daily pricing across the metric
- **Time aggregation**: Daily boundaries are established by truncating transaction timestamps to day level, with all transactions within a 24-hour period aggregated together
- **Final calculation**: The final metric value equals the daily sum of all base fees plus priority fees, converted to USD, representing the total economic value generated by the Plasma network through transaction fees each day

*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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