Measurement choices strongly shape perceptions of blockchain concentration
The Same Ledger, Different Verdicts: How Measurement Specification Determines On-Chain Concentration
Social and Information Networks
Summary
Whether a blockchain seems fair and spread out depends a lot on how you measure it, not just what the blockchain looks like. The authors studied two specific tokens and found that different ways of counting who owns or controls them can lead to very different results. Some measures showed the tokens very concentrated in few hands, while others said they were more spread out. This means that people should report a range of results when talking about decentralization instead of a single number.
What this means in practice
- •For blockchain analysts: Use specified measurement parameters to provide ranges rather than points when reporting token concentration on blockchains, improving clarity and avoiding misleading conclusions.
- •For cryptocurrency governance teams: Evaluate on-chain governance and routing structures recognizing the often distinct roles and concentration patterns, aiding in designing fairer systems.
Authors
Jintao Liu, Zhimo Ji, Xuzhe Lin
Abstract
Whether a public blockchain is "decentralized" is routinely settled by citing a concentration statistic. On two ERC-20 ledgers, Chainlink (LINK) and Uniswap (UNI) over a 90-day window, we show that verdict depends on measurement specification rather than the ledger itself. Four discretionary choices (holder population, address type, temporal aggregation, and entity resolution) move the balance HHI for UNI from 109 to 2,336 (a factor of 21), with every specification defensible. Over the same range, the Gini coefficient moves by less than 0.003 and does not change under entity resolution, demonstrating that Gini and HHI answer different questions and cannot substitute for one another. We further document an implementation choice - summing versus overwriting repeated transfers - that discards roughly 85% of volume and overturns a finding on wealth and structural position. Substantively, both ledgers are extraordinarily unequal in ownership (balance Gini = 0.990 and 0.998) yet unconcentrated in routing (weekly flow HHI = 421 and 386), with the two dimensions close to statistically independent across addresses. A parameterized criterion for hidden brokers identifies 30 and 18 zero-balance intermediaries, 12 shared across ledgers; a matched control confirms that degree thresholding, rather than learned embeddings, drives the discovery. Finally, on the governance ledger, proposal-eligible addresses and routing intermediaries are almost disjoint, so routing contestability is held at the pleasure of a rule layer with a Nakamoto coefficient of two. We conclude that on-chain concentration should be reported as a specified range rather than a point estimate.