Introducing the ‘Insider transactions’ data set

"Insiders might sell their shares for any number of reasons, but they buy them for only one: they think the price will rise" - Peter Lynch, one of the greatest investors of all time.

We are excited to announce our new Insider transactions data set. We look forward to seeing how the analyst community makes use of it. Don’t hesitate to reach out to us via X DMs or people@tokenterminal.xyz to share feedback and questions.

The current data set includes data for 150+ ERC20 governance tokens on Ethereum, with more to come soon!

Please note that the data set is constructed solely from onchain transactions, i.e. it does not show what insiders might buy and/or sell offchain.

Let’s dig in!

Overview

• What? A data table that shows the top 1,000 (based on $ value) token transfers or DEX trades from the past week for a protocol’s governance token, when the sender and/or receiver is among the top 100 (based on $ value) tokenholders.
• Why? Tracking what the stakeholders with the most information about a protocol’s future do with their positions is another interesting data point to add to an investor's overall due diligence.
• So what? It’s possible to profit by identifying insider buying or selling patterns before the rest of the market.

Why was the Insider transactions data set created?

We created the data set to provide investors with additional information to support their overall due diligence.

One could argue that there’s a significant amount of information tied to the actions (buying/selling) of insiders, as they are likely to possess information about upcoming protocol versions, chain deployments, business lines, fee schedule changes, layoffs, etc.

How to read the Insider transactions data table?

The Insider transactions table might look a bit overwhelming at a first glance, but breaking it down column by column makes the interpretation of the data a lot easier.

A walkthrough of the different columns, from left to right:

1. Project: name of the project
2. Token: token symbol
3. Timestamp: time for when the token transfer or DEX trade took place
4. Quantity: how many tokens were bought or sold
5. USD value: dollar value of the tokens that were bought or sold
6. USD flow: directional dollar value of the tokens that were bought or sold
7. Action type: buy or sell
8. Transaction type: token transfer (proxy for a sell/buy) or a DEX trade
9. DEX: which onchain trading venue the DEX trade took place on
10. From address: insider address
11. To address: insider address
12. Transaction hash: block explorer link

The Insider transactions data set in action:

Things to keep in mind

As you start to look for insights in the data set, here are some things to consider (and filter/order by):

1. Absolute value: how large was the trade?
2. Relative value: how much of an insider's holdings were included in the trade?
3. Consensus: is there a consensus by more than one insider making the same trade?
4. Role: which insider specifically was making the trade?
5. Vesting: has the insider unlocked their tokens recently?

What’s next?

Some features we’re working on adding next:

1. Entity labels for the token launch (TGE) participants
2. Entity labels for the rest of the insiders
3. Behavioral labels for insiders based on their prior onchain activity
4. Flags if/when tokens are ultimately transferred to a CEX
5. Custom alerts, and more!

We are extremely excited about the new Insider transactions data set, and look forward to seeing how the analyst community makes use of it. Don’t hesitate to reach out to us via X DMs to share feedback and questions.

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