Ethereum’s coins continue to age “gracefully”. Mean coin age is a relatively new method of measurement to observe a network’s behavior in aggregate. For each coin, we calculate how long it has stayed in its current address and we compute the average of all those ages. Major drops in mean coin age indicate that previously dormant coins are starting to change addresses, and often correlate with increased market volatility. An undisrupted incline on the chart signals a growing average age of all coins on the network.

The current view of Ethereum’s Mean Age highlights a year-long period of relative token inactivity (barring a few minor bumps at short-term price increases). On aggregate, previously dormant coins aren’t moving or being interacted with, and the average age of ETH (network-wide) continues to grow. This is further reinforced by the declining share of Ethereum tokens that have moved within the last 365 days; On January 1st, 2019, 54.6% of all ETH in existence was active within the past year. At the end of January 2020, this number has dropped to 39.6% of the total ETH supply. Both data points highlight the same trend - ‘old’ coins remain relatively unutilized, and the share of active coins continues to decrease. With the explosive growth of ‘ETH locking’ mechanisms and DeFi solutions, this is likely to become the norm in years to come.

It will be interesting to see how this trend affects various valuation models that draw from network activity and health indicators. NVT, for example, posits that the more value transferred on the network (using on-chain trx volume as a proxy), the more valuable the network is itself. Given that several of Ethereum’s emerging use cases warrant relative coin inactivity, it could likely prompt the creation of new and/or modified approaches to ‘traditional’ blockchain network valuation.