Introduction

This analysis gives insights into the behavior of nominators within the polkadot network. Nominators are tracked across consecutive sessions using their unique stash address. Within this dataset, each session provides insight into the bonded_amount and a list of targets, representing the nominators’ selected nominations. This approach enables a comparison between sessions, effectively monitoring any changes that occur over time.

The following table illustrates the parameters of the analysis. Note, that there have been some outages in the data collection, but the analysis copes with that and minimizes the impact on the outcome quality.
Parameter Value
Chain polkadot
First Session 5807
Last Session 6351
Missing Tables 100
Total number of unique nominators 54998

Changes over time

In this section, we examine the temporal fluctuations in both the bonded amount and the targets chosen by each nominator. This analysis helps to identify trends and patterns in the behavior of nominators over time.

Bonded Amount: Histogram of changes

The analysis primarily emphasizes the frequency of alterations in the bonded amount. It is essential to note that changes only take effect following a new election, which occurs every 6 sessions. To account for this, it is more meaningful to normalize the frequency on a “per era” basis rather than per session. In this context, if a nominator modifies their bonded amount once throughout 6 sessions, the frequency in the histogram is represented as 1. Conversely, if a nominator adjusts their bonded_amount every session, the frequency is denoted as 6.

There are a few outlier nominators who adjust their bonded amount with remarkable frequency. For the purpose of this analysis, we will concentrate on those with a frequency lying between 0 and 1, ensuring a more representative understanding of typical nominator behavior.

Bonded amount: Changes over sessions

The subsequent graph illustrates the variations in bonded amount across sessions. The frequency displayed is in absolute terms, representing the total number of nominators who altered their bonded_amount within each individual session. This visualization helps to convey the overall trends and patterns in nominators’ behavior over time.

We can observe a high number of changes in the bonded amount. However, this is primarily due to many nominators employing automatic re-bonding of staking rewards. Distinguishing manual changes in the bonded amount from automatic ones is challenging. An approximation could be made based on the stash address size and the expected staking rewards per session, but this is left unexplored for now.

Targets

This analysis forms the most crucial aspect of nominator behavior as it directly sheds light on their validator preferences and the frequency with which they update their nominations. The following histogram displays individual changes in targets across nominators over the entire time frame. The data is normalized by the number of sessions a nominator has been active and is presented on a per-era basis. In other words, a value of 1 signifies that a nominator altered their targets once every six sessions they were active. It is important to note that, in contrast to the bonded_amount, changes in targets are always manually initiated by nominators, reflecting conscious decision-making.

Targets: Histogram of changes

Once more, we encounter some outlier nominators who alter their targets with exceptional frequency, which hampers the graph’s readability. To address this, the following graph narrows its focus to nominators who modify their targets between 0 and 100% of the time, specifically every six sessions. This refined visualization aids in better understanding the typical behavior of nominators in relation to their target changes.

The following graph plots the frequency of target changes of nominators per session.

Nomination of inactive validators

The subsequent histogram presents the ratio of active to inactive validators within the nominators’ targets. Unlike previous analyses, this examination focuses on the current state of the network during the most recent session (6351). In this context, a ratio of 1 indicates that all validators a nominator is voting for are presently active. This insight offers an understanding of the overall alignment of nominator preferences with the active validator pool.

In general, there are 28602 (or 64.21%) nominators that have at least one inactive validator in their targets.