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Blockchains (L1)

Plasma

# Plasma Number of validators Methodology

## 1. Overview

The `number_of_validators` metric for Plasma measures the daily count of unique validators participating in block production. This metric tracks validator decentralization and network participation by counting distinct miner addresses that produced blocks each day. Plasma currently operates with internal validators run by the Plasma team, making this metric important for monitoring validator activity and network operations.

## 2. Data sources

The calculation relies on the following raw data sources:
- **Plasma blockchain blocks**: Complete block data from the Plasma blockchain containing block metadata
- **Block timestamps**: Timestamp information for each block to enable daily aggregation  
- **Validator addresses**: Miner addresses representing the validators who produced each block
- **Genesis block correction data**: Special handling for block 0 timestamp correction

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Block data preparation
- **Purpose**: Extracts and cleans raw Plasma block data for validator counting
- **Logic**: Retrieves block information from Plasma blockchain data including timestamps, block numbers, and miner addresses. Applies data quality corrections specifically for the genesis block (block 0) by replacing its Unix epoch timestamp with '2025-09-03 19:36:57 UTC' to match the actual network start time of block 1. Casts all fields to appropriate data types for consistent processing.
- **Key fields**: `block_timestamp` (corrected timestamps), `block_number` (block identifiers), `miner` (validator addresses)

### Component B: Daily validator aggregation  
- **Purpose**: Counts unique validators per day based on block production
- **Logic**: Truncates block timestamps to daily boundaries to create consistent aggregation periods. Groups all blocks by day and counts distinct miner addresses to determine how many unique validators produced blocks on each day. This approach ensures that validators producing multiple blocks per day are only counted once.
- **Key fields**: `timestamp` (daily boundaries), `number_of_validators` (distinct miner count)

### Final aggregation
- **Combining components**: The daily aggregated validator counts are processed through the finalize metric framework
- **Time aggregation**: Data is aggregated to daily boundaries using timestamp truncation, ensuring consistent daily reporting periods
- **Fill strategy**: Applies 'fill_zeros' strategy to handle days with no block production, ensuring continuous daily metrics
- **Final calculation**: The final metric represents the count of distinct validator addresses that produced at least one block on each given day, providing a measure of daily validator participation in the Plasma network

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

Number of active validators securing the network.

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Number of validators

Number of validators

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