As blockchain is open and transparent, the statistics of all cryptocurrencies on the chain are available through the relevant blockchain explorer. The number of non-zero addresses, in particular, is one of the key metrics for asset analysis. In theory, the more non-zero addresses a crypto has, the more holders there are, which indicates a growing recognition of the crypto among investors. Besides, it also shows a high degree of consensus.
Based on data from online sources as of March 14, 2022, ViaBTC listed the top 5 PoW tokens ranked by the number of non-zero addresses for your easy reference.
Top 1: ETH
ETH is the PoW currency with the most non-zero addresses and the second most valued token, second only to Bitcoin. Relying on the comprehensive smart contract functions, Ethereum developers can build a wide range of applications on the Ethereum ecosystem. This is appealing to a large number of users. In fact, plenty of users choose to hold ETH because they need DeFi or other Dapps on the platform to pay the Gas fees required for transactions and application interactions. As the ecosystem expands, Ethereum will have more non-zero addresses. However, the Ethereum mainnet is expected to merge with the PoS-based Beacon Chain this year. By then, Ethereum will have fully shifted from PoW to PoS.
Top 2: BTC
As far as cryptocurrencies go, Bitcoin is much more famous than its peers. BTC is the PoW currency with the second most non-zero addresses and also the most valued token. Compared with ETH, due to the lack of smart contracts, Bitcoin can only be used for payment, which is why its non-zero addresses are fewer. However, as the most noted cryptocurrency, Bitcoin remains the first choice for a great number of users.
Top 3: BSV
BSV is a BCH hard fork. In 2018, Bitcoin ABC, the primary development team of BCH, disagreed with the Bitcoin Satoshi Vision team led by Craig S Wight. The latter directly increased the block size to 128 MB and triggered a blocksize war. Finally, BSV was hard-forked from BCH by the Bitcoin SV team. Though BSV has a large number of non-zero addresses, its price is far less than BTC and is also behind BCH.
Top 4: BCH
In 2017, BCH broke off from BTC due to a heated community disagreement. On the one side of the argument was Bitcoin ABC, the advocate for big blocks who championed the scaling of Bitcoin; on the other side were proponents of small blocks led by Bitcoin Core. Faced with Bitcoin Core’s reluctance to go with the Hong Kong consensus, Bitcoin ABC developed its own client system that scaled BTC to 8MB, which led to the first major hard fork in the history of Bitcoin and the birth of a new cryptocurrency called BCH that ranks 28th among all cryptos in terms of total market cap.
Top 5: DOGE
When DOGE was first launched as a tool for community rewards, the token had more active addresses than its PoW peers like Litecoin. Since the beginning of 2021, KOLs such as CEO of Tesla Elon Musk and the Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban have backed DOGE, which has enabled an almost hundredfold growth. Meanwhile, DOGE ownership is becoming increasingly concentrated, with fewer active addresses. The token has gradually evolved from a reward tool to one of the most favored investment targets.
Though the number of non-zero addresses is crucial for assessing the consensus level of a cryptocurrency, auxiliary metrics such as the proportion of big holdings and the number of daily active addresses should also be considered in assessments of the decentralization and liquidity of a token. When looking for a target token, to maximize the profit, miners can take into consideration these metrics, or adopt the Smart Mining service offered by ViaBTC to concentrate their hashing power on tokens with higher returns.
