Coinbase proposes new blockchain adoption metric to combat airdrop-related distortions
Crypto change Coinbase has unveiled a brand new metric dubbed the h-index to handle distortions in monitoring onchain adoption brought on by airdrop-related actions.
Coinbase, a publicly traded U.S.-based cryptocurrency change, recognized for its improvement of Base, a layer-2 answer for Ethereum, has launched a brand new metric to supply a extra correct measure of blockchain community adoption. This new metric goals to mitigate distortions brought on by airdrop-related actions and Sybil assaults.
In a analysis report on Friday, Coinbase famous that investments in blockchain infrastructure have led to an extra of blockspace, making onchain transactions cheaper and fueling networks with a brand new wave of decentralized functions. Nonetheless, this alteration additionally made it difficult for analysts to trace ecosystem adoption as extra functions launch.
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Conventional community metrics resembling complete transactions or every day energetic addresses will be skewed by Sybil assaults and airdrop actions, Coinbase says. To deal with this difficulty, Coinbase proposes a brand new metric known as the h-index, which balances the depth and breadth of onchain adoption. The h-index counts the variety of addresses receiving transactions from at the least that very same variety of distinctive sending addresses.
“In different phrases, an h-index of 100 implies that 100 totally different receiving addresses had obtained transactions from at the least 100 distinctive sending addresses over a given time-frame.”
Coinbase
In response to Coinbase’s findings, when h-index utilized, Ethereum and Base networks exhibited probably the most widespread person exercise for the week ending Jun 6, adopted by Arbitrum and Polygon.
H-index for blockchain networks | Supply: Coinbase
Whereas acknowledging the metric’s imperfections, Coinbase believes the h-index can shed “new views on comparative chain adoption by mitigating the outsized influences of Sybils and measuring development extra broadly.”
The crypto change famous although that challenges nonetheless stay, together with variations in blockchain execution environments, which might have an effect on transaction codecs and information interpretation. Moreover, the affect of change or different sensible contract wallets “may additionally distort numbers,” Coinbase admits.
Sybil assaults are a widely known sort of community assault within the crypto business the place a single entity creates a number of pretend identities or nodes to achieve management over a community or affect its operation. This type of exercise can manipulate community metrics and information by creating quite a few false accounts or addresses to inflate transaction volumes or person exercise artificially to distort the notion of community utilization and adoption.
Learn extra: Arbitrum airdrop marred by Sybil assaults
