Author: Riyue Xiaochu
Key points:
AAVE has a circulating market value of 2.3 billion USD and a FDV of 2.46 billion USD. 43,000 AAVE are newly circulated every month.
On-chain data shows that funds in the US time zone led the increase in AAVE holdings.
Most of AAVE's major holders are in a profitable state, but the overall profit is not high. Judging from the profit and loss situation, most of the major holders are not the ones in the 2021 bull market, and most of the chips in the middle have been fully changed hands.
The addresses of AAVE holders have relatively large amounts of funds and are powerful big investors.
1 AAVE Overview
1) The total amount of AAVE is 16 million. According to coinmarketcap data, the current circulation of AAVE is 14.93 million, with a market value of 2.3 billion US dollars and a FDV of 2.46 billion US dollars.
2) From the perspective of chip distribution, AAVE is mainly divided into two parts. 13 million 20-year exchange tokens are exchanged from LEND, and 3 million are used for ecological incentives. 3 million, 43,000 new tokens are added to circulation every month. The functions are divided into two parts, one for rewards for AAVE pledgers, and the other for the creation team rewards.
3) The AAVE Genesis Wallet still holds 790,000 AAVE, worth $122 million.
2. Distribution of chips on the chain
2.1 Top 10 holding addresses:
Looking at the on-chain holding addresses, the largest holding address is the AAVE staking address, with 2.99 million tokens staked. Among the top 20 addresses, most are cold wallets of project owners and exchanges. The addresses that deserve special attention are:
1) Holding address 9, where LEND was migrated to AAVE, there are still 330,000 AAVE that have not been migrated, worth 50 million USD. Due to the time interval of several years, it is highly likely that the wallets of these tokens have forgotten the private keys. This means that these chips are considered to be destroyed.
2) The largest institution holding AAVE is Blockchain Capital, which holds 233,000 AAVE tokens. Blockchain Capital is an investment institution of AAVE, and most of its tokens have not been sold and are still held to this day.
2.2 Overall chip distribution
From the perspective of chips, AAVE holds 37.29% of the project, but this includes staking chips, which belong to users. Binance holds 2.19 million, accounting for 13.07%. Coinbase, Kraken, upbit, etc. are next. The main on-chain liquidity of AAVE is in Balancer, which holds 880,000 AAVE and has a liquidity of 170 million US dollars. The second largest on-chain liquidity is 13M in AAVE's uniswap.
From the perspective of public chain distribution, most of AAVE’s 16 million are on the Ethereum main chain. Other chains with more are BSC: 500,000 and Polygon: 229,000.
2.3 Staking
1) From the perspective of changes in staking, AAVE has maintained a staking volume of 2 to 3 million. Since the start of staking in 2020, it quickly reached 2.8 million in October. It then reached a maximum of 3.6 million in February 2021.
2) From the perspective of the change in the number of pledges, AAVE pledgers will also be affected by the bear market to a certain extent. In the bear market of 2022, the amount of AAVE pledged dropped significantly, from 3.17 million to 1.97 million, a drop of 1.2 million. And when the market was not good in the second half of 2023, there was also a continuous decline.
3) After May 24, AAVE’s pledge continued to rise again. It has now recovered to 2.99 million.
3 Analysis of Exchange Chips
In the above figure, the first one represents the daily deposit/withdrawal of the exchange, where yellow represents the net deposit of the day, and blue represents the net withdrawal of the day. The shaded area is the accumulation of deposits and withdrawals. The second figure represents the average amount of each deposit/withdrawal, which is used to determine whether the deposit and withdrawal are the behavior of large investors or retail investors. Intuitively, the higher the value, the behavior of large investors, and the lower the peak value, the behavior of retail investors.
1) From the deposit and withdrawal of the exchange, from -89,000 on August 4 to +190,000 on September 16, it means that in more than a month, the cumulative net inflow into the exchange is about 280,000. However, there is some uncertainty here. The exchange here includes Coinbase, and Coinbase has a Prime Custody service. AAVE deposited in the Custody service should not be counted as a user's deposit to Coinbase. On the contrary, users give AAVE to Coinbase for token custody, which is a sign of long-term holding.
2) From the average amount of each recharge, the amount of single-coin recharge is higher than the reflected amount. The maximum is 8.9. There is an average recharge of 1176. This shows that it is a recharge from a large user. This is very consistent with our above assumption. Because providing Prime Custody services is definitely the behavior of large users.
I excluded the data from Coinbase and counted the changes in AAVE holdings on other exchanges. It can be clearly seen that AAVE has been experiencing a net outflow since July 25. It has dropped from 3.45 million to 3.28 million, with a net outflow of 170,000.
The above picture shows the number of transfers between the wallet addresses (contract addresses) of dex and cex, which is the cumulative number of transfers in and out. Please note that the time above is UTC.
From CEX, we can see that the most active time on CEX is UTC 15:00, 16:00, and 17:00. If converted to Beijing time, it is 11pm, 12pm, and 1am in China. It is the most active time for the United States. The transfer volume is the smallest at 12:00 and 17:00 Beijing time, which is the most active time for Asia. This can indirectly show that AAVE has been mainly active with American funds in the past two months.
From dex, we can see that the most active time on DEX is UTC 21:00, followed by 17:00 and 07:00. Converted to Beijing time, the most active time is still 8 am. Of course, we can also clearly see that the overall transfer in and out of the exchange is higher than the situation.
It is obvious from the transfers on dex and cex that funds are more active on exchanges and are in the US time zone.
4. In-depth portrait of major coin holders
Please note that the major coin holders here are the major coin holders of AAVE after excluding the addresses of project parties, dex, cex, mev, dex intermediate wallets, cex intermediate wallets, etc. These major coin holders may include institutions.
The above is the core information of the summary of the addresses of major coin holders.
1) ROI. From the perspective of ROI, more than 75% of the large holders are in a profitable state, but the profit is not high. The median profit is 20%, and the maximum profit is 137%. However, 26% of the large holders are still in a loss state, with the largest loss being 66%. Combined with the price of AAVE, the highest point of AAVE was $668 in the 21-year bull market, and the lowest point was $49. It can be clearly inferred from the profit and loss that most of the chips have been fully changed hands.
2) HoldDay represents the length of time the address holds the coins, with the median being 287 days, or about 9 months. This means that more than half of the large holders bought the coins this year, while the other half bought them 24 years ago. Only 25% of the large holders hold the coins for more than 647 days, or more than 1 year. The largest holder is 1,342 days.
3) TransactionsPerDay (TPD) refers to the average number of daily transfers of an address, which is used to measure the activity of wallets on the chain and can be used to judge whether the holder is a long-term or short-term operator. From the data, the median TPD of AAVE's major holders is 0.048 times, which means an average of 1 to 2 times per month. This mainly reflects that major holders of AAVE rarely make frequent transactions. This is completely different from the current group of people who are rushing to the earth and MeMe on the chain.
4) From the addressAge, we can see that the median wallet age is 654 days, and more than three quarters of the wallets have been there for more than 1147 days. This shows that most wallets are not newly generated addresses, but have existed for some time.
Overall, most of the wallets of AAVE's major holders are wallets that have been in use for more than 9 months, and the daily transfer volume is not active, so they are not frequent traders. Most of them are in a profitable state, but the overall profit is not high. From the perspective of profit and loss, most of the major holders are not from the 21-year bull market, and most of the chips in the middle have been fully changed hands.
Let’s further study the cost of large holders. The above figure is a graph showing the cost of large holders and the relationship between the amount of money held. From the above figure, we can intuitively see
1) The average holding cost of most large investors is concentrated between $85 and $150, especially around $100, where the concentration is the highest. This price is also the recent fluctuation range. We can see that between $85 and $100, there are positions of all levels, with positions of around 6K, 20K, and 35K.
2) There is a gap in the cost range, with prices between 200 and 200. AAVE has been priced below 200 since April 2022, indicating that these large holders have been holding on for a long time. It can be seen that the overall chips in this part are relatively small, with the largest holder holding about 20K, and most of them holding less than 10K.
3) There is also a group of people whose holding costs are below $70. Their returns have doubled based on the current price, but their overall share is relatively small.
5 Analysis of major investors who increased their holdings in the last 60 days
Note: Large holders who increase their holdings refer to large holders who have made new purchases, and they may overlap with large holders who hold positions. For example, a certain address is a large holder of the top 100 and has increased its holdings. If this address holds 50K and has recently purchased 2K, only 2K will be used in the analysis here.
5.1 Distribution of Increased Holdings
The above picture shows the increase in holdings by major holders in the past 60 days. The largest increase is between 0K and 1K, about 140,000 US dollars, with a total of 23 addresses. The second largest increase is between 1K and 2K, with a total of 15 addresses. The second largest increase is between 2K and 12K, with different numbers of increase addresses distributed. However, when it comes to more than 14K, there are fewer, with only 1 person increasing holdings in each category.
The largest address has increased its holdings to around 26K, worth approximately 4 million US dollars.
5.2 Basic information of the increase in holdings
1) Analysis of address holding time:
The median of the addressAge column is 281.5 days, which is about 9 months. This shows that more than half of the large holders generated addresses in less than a year. And 25% of the increase in holders is after 42 days. Comparing it with the large holders, it is found that the address age is significantly lower than that of large holders (median is 654 days), which shows that the recent increase in holders is a new batch of buyers,
2) TransactionsPerDay (TPD) analysis:
The median transactionPerDay is 0.0731 times/day, which means there are about 2 transactions per month. This shows that the large holders of AAVE have low transaction frequency, do not frequently participate in on-chain activities, and are more likely to hold for the long term. This is very different from some current high-frequency short-term trading investors, further indicating that most holders have adopted a more conservative operation strategy.
3) Token Number
The number of tokens held by an address can be used to measure the investment style of the address. If the number is relatively large, it is often an address that casts a wide net. If the number of tokens is relatively small, it is often an investment habit of buying heavily in favored coins. The median number of coins held by AAVE holders is 4. Because the statistics here include AAVE itself, 50% of the holders hold less than 3 other coins. Among them, 25% of the addresses hold only AAVE.
5.3 Total assets of holders
The total assets of the address of the holder can measure the financial strength of the address, and to a certain extent, the potential strength of these holders to continue to buy in the future. From the data, there are 26, 10, 8, and 9 addresses with assets between 0~500K, 500K~1M, 1M~1.5M, and 1.5M~2M. This shows that the holders of AAVE are addresses with relatively large amounts of funds. The address with the largest amount of funds is 20.5M.
5.4 Holdings of Increasers
This chart clearly shows that the largest holding of AAVE holders is AAVE, which is of course a very natural answer. The second and third positions are ETH and USDT respectively. Other holdings are ONDO, USDC, UNI, FET, LINK, PENDLE, ETH, stETH, aETHAAVE, and USDT. From the chart, it can be seen that holders prefer traditional projects rather than the latest hot spots and narratives.
