Introduction:

Near Protocol is a layer 1 blockchain network. It provides a platform on which developers can build decentralized applications (dapps).

The key yardsticks for layer 1 networks are transaction costs, speed and the ability to maintain those features as transaction volumes grow. Near Protocol is faster and cheaper than Ethereum.

Near Protocol’s defining feature is a technique called "sharding," designed to improve transaction speed and capacity. It involves breaking up the blockchain into sub-chains with different validators working on them, which regularly get connected to one another. Effectively, the network dodges the problem of becoming too big by cutting itself up into smaller parts.

Question:

Calculate the distribution of $NEAR holdings by address.

In terms of charts, feel free to create a histogram or whichever visual you think works best!

The above chart shows the distribution of NEAR holders.

As you can see:

• Most of the wallets (93.7%) have less than 1 NEAR in their bag. So based on this fact we can say most of the NEAR users are fish.
• As the number of NEAR tokens in each category increases, the number of users in that category decreases.
• The black line shows the average users’ balance in each category. on (0, 1] the average balance is 0.026 which is too close to 0 rather than 1. Totally, in all categories, the average balance is closer to the floor rather than ceil.

This chart shows the total NEAR amount held by users whose their balance falls in each category.

As you can see:

• As expected, more than 98% of the token is owned by those who hold more than 1000 of it.

This chart shows the current top 10 NEAR holders.

The order of the top three is:

:1st_place_medal:binance1.near with more than 26.7M NEAR

:2nd_place_medal:8143efad287c6697545e45c64e0789bfe6f5d69bef0910ce476f9314347e386d with more than 13.3M NEAR

:3rd_place_medal:32015d51d67a2a3d791d325f23d364e308fd1f19d49d885d42b8bf2d594dda5c with more than 11.6M NEAR

Solution

To answer this question, I used near.core.fact_transfers table. We are looking to find the distribution of NEAR holders so need to follow the following steps:

• find the flow into each NEAR wallet.
• find the flow out of each NEAR wallet.
• subtract the outflow from the inflow of each NEAR wallet.

To find the distribution, we need to consider different categories and count the number of addresses that fall into each. The categories I considered are power 10. means 0-10, 10-100, 100-1K, and etc.

Conclusion:

• Most of the wallets (93.7%) have less than 1 NEAR.
• As the number of NEAR tokens in each category increases, the number of users in that category decreases.
• This protocol has 99% small users, but 99% of its tokens are held by whales.
• Binance is the biggest current NEAR whale.
• The current average NEAR balance among all wallets is around 240 NEAR.