Validators process transactions and receive fees from users (supply-side fees).

Stellar is a distributed ledger for transfer and store of value (a blockchain). Stellar was founded by Jed McCaleb launched in 2014.

XLM holders own and govern the protocol. They currently take all of the total transaction fees paid by users (revenue).

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Blockchains (L1)

Stellar

# Stellar Block time Methodology

## 1. Overview

Block time measures the average time interval between consecutive blocks on the Stellar blockchain, expressed in milliseconds. This metric indicates the network's block production speed and consistency. The calculation takes raw Stellar blockchain data, computes time differences between consecutive blocks, and aggregates these intervals into daily averages.

## 2. Data sources

- **Stellar blockchain block data**: Raw block records from the Stellar network containing block timestamps and sequential block numbers
- **Block metadata**: Block identifiers and timing information used to establish the chronological sequence of blocks

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Block timestamp extraction
- **Purpose**: Retrieves block timing data from the Stellar blockchain while filtering out invalid records
- **Logic**: Extracts `block_timestamp` and `block_number` fields from Stellar blockchain block data. Excludes the genesis block (block number 0) because it contains an invalid timestamp set to the Unix epoch start, which would distort block time calculations
- **Key fields**: `block_timestamp` contains the precise timing when each block was produced, `block_number` provides sequential block ordering

### Component B: Block interval calculation
- **Purpose**: Computes the time elapsed between consecutive blocks
- **Logic**: Orders blocks by their sequential block numbers and uses a lag window function to pair each block with the timestamp of the immediately preceding block. Calculates the time difference between consecutive block timestamps in milliseconds. Excludes the first block in the sequence since it has no predecessor for comparison
- **Key fields**: `block_time` contains the millisecond interval between consecutive blocks, `previous_timestamp` holds the timestamp of the preceding block

### Component C: Daily aggregation
- **Purpose**: Groups block intervals by day and calculates average block times
- **Logic**: Truncates block timestamps to day boundaries to group blocks by calendar day. Computes the arithmetic mean of all block intervals within each day. Assigns metadata fields including chain identifier as 'stellar', market sector as 'blockchains_l1', and business segment as 'blockchain'
- **Key fields**: `timestamp` represents the daily boundary, `block_time` contains the average millisecond interval for that day

### Final aggregation
- **Combining components**: No additional combining required as the calculation flows sequentially through timestamp extraction, interval calculation, and daily aggregation
- **Currency conversion**: Not applicable for this time-based metric
- **Time aggregation**: Block intervals are aggregated using arithmetic mean within daily boundaries, with timestamps truncated to day precision
- **Final calculation**: The final metric represents the average time in milliseconds between consecutive blocks for each day on the Stellar network, standardized through the finalize_metric_block_time macro for consistent formatting and metadata

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

avg(block_timestamp - previous_block_timestamp)

StellarXLM

Block time

Block time

Competitive landscape