Deep Report on AAVE OnChain Data

CoinWorld reported:
Author: Ri Yue Xiao Chu
This article will analyze AAVE’s on-chain data in September 2024.
Key points:
1) AAVE’s circulating market value is $2.3 billion, with a fully diluted valuation (FDV) of $2.46 billion. There are 43,000 new AAVE tokens circulating each month.
2) On-chain data shows that funds from the United States dominate the increase in AAVE holdings.
3) Most of the major AAVE holders are in a profitable state, but the overall profitability is not high. From the perspective of gains and losses, most of the major holders are not from the bull market of 2021, and a significant portion of their chips have been fully exchanged.
4) The addresses of AAVE’s major buyers have a large amount of funds, indicating that they are powerful investors.
1 Overview of AAVE
1) The total supply of AAVE is 16 million tokens. According to CoinMarketCap data, the current circulating supply of AAVE is 14.93 million tokens, with a circulating market value of $2.3 billion and an FDV of $2.46 billion.
2) In terms of chip distribution, AAVE can be divided into two parts: 13 million tokens were converted from LEND in 2020, and 3 million tokens are used for ecosystem incentives. Among the 3 million tokens, 43,000 new tokens are released into circulation each month. They are used for AAVE stakers’ rewards and the genesis team’s incentives.
3) The AAVE genesis wallet still holds 790,000 AAVE tokens, worth $122 million.
2 On-chain chip distribution
2.1 Top 10 holdings addresses:
From the on-chain holdings addresses, the largest holder is the AAVE staking address, with 2.99 million tokens. Among the top 20 addresses, most of them belong to project teams and exchanges’ cold wallets. One address worth noting is address 9, which is the address where LEND was migrated to AAVE. There are still 330,000 AAVE tokens in this address, worth $50 million. Due to the time interval of several years, it is highly probable that the wallet for these tokens has forgotten the private key, effectively treating these tokens as destroyed. The largest institutional holder is blockchain capital, holding 233,000 tokens. Blockchain capital is an investment institution for AAVE, and most of its tokens have not been sold and are still held.
2.2 Overall chip distribution
From the chip theme perspective, AAVE is mainly held by project teams, accounting for 37.29%. However, this includes staking chips, which belong to users. Binance exchange holds 2.19 million tokens, accounting for 13.07%. Other major holdings are in Coinbase, Kraken, Upbit, etc. The majority of AAVE’s on-chain liquidity is in Balancer, with 880,000 AAVE tokens, amounting to $170 million in liquidity. The second is in AAVE’s Uniswap, with liquidity of 13 million tokens.
From the distribution on public chains, most of AAVE’s 16 million tokens are on the Ethereum mainnet. There are also significant amounts on other chains, including BSC (500,000 tokens) and Polygon (229,000 tokens).
2.3 Staking situation
From the changes in staking, AAVE has maintained a staking amount of 2-3 million tokens. It quickly reached 2.8 million tokens in October after the start of staking in 2020, and reached a peak of 3.6 million tokens in February 2021. Looking at the changes in staking quantity, AAVE’s stakers have also been affected by bear markets. During the bear market in 2022, AAVE’s staking amount experienced a significant drop from 3.17 million to 1.97 million, a decrease of 1.2 million tokens. There have also been continuous decreases in the second half of 2023 when the market conditions were poor. After May 2024, AAVE’s staking has been steadily increasing and has now reached 2.99 million tokens.
3 Exchange chip analysis
The first chart represents the daily deposits/withdrawals of exchanges, with yellow representing net deposits and blue representing net withdrawals. The shaded area represents the cumulative deposits and withdrawals. The second chart represents the average amount per deposit/withdrawal, which helps determine whether the deposits and withdrawals are from large accounts or retail investors. Intuitively, higher values represent large account behavior, while lower peaks are mainly retail behavior.
From the exchange deposits and withdrawals, from August 4th (-89,000 tokens) to September 16th (+190,000 tokens), there was a net inflow of approximately 280,000 tokens within a little over a month. However, there is some uncertainty here as this includes Coinbase, and Coinbase has Prime Custody services, so AAVE deposited into Custody services should not be counted as user deposits into Coinbase. Instead, users who give AAVE to Coinbase for token custody are likely to intend to hold it for the long term.
Looking at the average amount per deposit, the amount for deposits is higher than withdrawals. The peak occurred on August 9th, with an average deposit of 1,176 tokens, indicating large account deposits. This aligns with our previous assumption that using Prime Custody services is definitely a behavior of large account holders.
I excluded Coinbase’s exchange data and analyzed the AAVE holdings of other exchanges. It is evident that AAVE has been experiencing a net outflow since July 25th. It has decreased from 3.45 million to 3.28 million, with a net outflow of 170,000 tokens.
The chart above shows the cumulative number of wallet address transfers (contract addresses) for DEX and CEX, representing the cumulative number of transfers in and out. Please note that the time shown is in UTC.
From the CEX data, we can see that the most active times on CEX are UTC 15:00, 16:00, and 17:00. In Beijing time, this corresponds to 11 pm, 12 am, and 1 am the next day. These are the active times for the United States. The least active times in Beijing time are 12:00 pm and 17:00 pm, which correspond to the active times in Asia. This indirectly indicates that recent AAVE activities have been mainly driven by funds from the United States.
From the DEX data, the most active times on DEX are UTC 21:00, followed by 17:00 and 07:00. In Beijing time, the most active time is still 8 am. Of course, we can also clearly see that the overall transfers in and out on exchanges are higher compared to DEX.
From the transfers on DEX and CEX, it is evident that funds are more active on exchanges, particularly from the United States.
4 In-depth analysis of major holders’ profiles
Please note that these major holders are AAVE holders after excluding project teams, DEX, CEX, MEV, and intermediary wallet addresses. These major holders may include institutions.
The table above summarizes the core information of major holder addresses.
1) ROI: From the ROI perspective, over 75% of major holders are in a profitable state, but the profits are not high. The median profit is 20%, and the maximum profit is 137%. However, 26% of major holders are in a loss state, with the maximum loss being 66%. Considering AAVE’s price, which reached a peak of $668 during the bull market in 2021 and a low of $49, we can infer that most of the chips have been fully exchanged.
2) HoldDay: Represents the duration of address holdings, with a median of 287 days, or a little over 9 months. This indicates that more than half of the major holders bought in this year, while the other half bought before 2024. Only 25% of major holders have held their tokens for more than 647 days, or over 1 year. The longest holding address is 1,342 days.
3) TransactionsPerDay (TPD) is the average number of transfers per day for an address and serves as an indicator of on-chain activity and whether the holders are engaged in long-term or short-term operations. From the data, the median TPD for major AAVE holders is 0.048, which means they make 1-2 transactions per month on average. This indicates that most AAVE holders do not frequently engage in trading. This is in stark contrast to the recent frenzy around meme tokens.
4) From the addressAge perspective, we can see that the median age of wallets is 654 days, with over three-quarters of wallets existing for more than 1,147 days. This indicates that most wallets are not new and have been in existence for some time.
In summary, the wallets of major AAVE holders are mostly more than 9 months old, and the number of daily transactions is not high, indicating that they are not frequent traders. Most of them are in a profitable state, but the overall profitability is not high. From the gains and losses perspective, most of the major holders are not from the bull market of 2021, and a significant portion of their chips have been fully exchanged.
Further analyzing the cost of major holders, the chart above shows the relationship between the average holding cost and the amount held. From the chart, we can see that the average holding cost for most major holders is concentrated between $85 and $150, with the highest concentration around $100. This price range corresponds to recent fluctuations. We can see holdings between $85 and $100, ranging from 6,000 to holdings of 20,000 and 35,000.
There is a group of major holders with a cost range of $200 to $200. AAVE has been priced below $200 since April 2022, indicating that this group of major holders has been holding without selling for a long time. This group has relatively fewer chips, with the largest holder having around 20,000 and most holding 10,000 or less.
There is also a group of holdings with a cost below $70, which have already doubled in value at the current price, but the overall proportion is relatively small.
5 Analysis of recent major buyers
Note: Major buyers refer to addresses that have made new purchases recently. They may overlap with major holders. For example, an address may be a top 100 major holder and also a recent buyer. If this address holds 50,000 tokens and recently purchased 2,000 tokens, when analyzing, we only consider the 2,000 tokens.
5.1 Distribution of purchase quantities
The chart above shows the distribution of purchase quantities by major buyers in the past 60 days. The largest purchase quantity is in the 0-1K range, with approximately 140,000 tokens, a total of 23 addresses. The second-largest quantity is in the 1K-2K range, with a total of 15 addresses. The quantities are distributed differently in the 2K-12K range, but there are fewer purchases above 14K, with only one address in each category.
The largest address made a purchase of around 26,000 tokens, worth approximately $4 million.
5.2 Basic information of buyers
1) Analysis of address holding duration:
The median address age is 281.5 days, or about 9 months. This indicates that more than half of the major buyers generated addresses in less than a year. And 25% of buyers have an age of 42 days or more. Compared to major holders (median age of 654 days), the address age of recent buyers is significantly lower, indicating that they are a new group of buyers.
2) Analysis of daily transaction frequency (TransactionsPerDay, TPD):
The median TPD is 0.0731, which means there are approximately 2 transactions per month. This indicates that major AAVE buyers have a low trading frequency and are not actively participating in on-chain activities. They are more inclined to hold for the long term. This is in contrast to some high-frequency short-term traders, further indicating that most buyers have adopted a conservative approach.
3) TokenNum:
The number of tokens held by an address can measure the address’s investment style. If the quantity is large, it often indicates an address that diversifies its holdings. On the other hand, if the quantity is small, it indicates an address that prefers concentrated investments. The median TokenNum for AAVE buyers is 4, indicating that 50% of buyers hold fewer than 3 other tokens. Among them, 25% of addresses only hold AAVE.
5.3 Total assets of buyers
The chart above shows the total assets of buyers, which can measure their financial strength and potential buying power. From the data, there are 26, 10, 8, and 9 addresses with assets distributed in the ranges of 0-500K, 500K-1M, 1M-1.5M, and 1.5M-2M, respectively. This indicates that AAVE buyers are addresses with large amounts of funds. The address with the largest assets has 20.5 million tokens.
5.4 Buyer’s holdings distribution
The chart above clearly shows that the largest holdings of AAVE buyers are AAVE itself, which is a natural result. The second and third positions are ETH and USDT, respectively. Other holdings include ONDO, USDC, UNI, FET, LINK, PENDLE, ETH, stETH, aETHAAVE, and USDT. From the distribution, it can be seen that buyers prefer traditional projects rather than the latest hot trends and narratives.