Introduction

This report examines ETH holders in various cohorts, defined by their native ETH holdings throughout the years. We provide dashboards to actively navigate the market, particularly, questions such as, “are whales buying?” or is “retail entering the market?” can be monitored daily. We do this by looking at address counts and ETH balances over time. Additionally, we add a 30 day net change for both addresses and balances against ETH price.

Methodology

For this analysis, we strictly look at EOAs, no other wallets are considered. To do this, we filtered out all contracts, exchanges, MEV bots, NFT wash traders and any wallets belonging to any entity as labelled by Nansen’s attribution. Next, we narrowed down our search to real users. We do this by only including addresses that satisfy at least one of the following:

DEX trader
- The address has performed a DEX trade.
Liquidity provider
- The address has provided liquidity to pools on Uniswap (V2 or V3) or Sushiswap.
OpenSea user
- The address has interacted with the OpenSea registry proxy.

Thus, we are only left with EOAs who participate in some type of DeFi activity, which gives us a closer indication of real users defined in their respective ETH cohorts.

After we applied our filters, we wanted to define our ETH cohorts. Starting from “Less than 1 ETH”, we moved up by a factor of 10 as shown below:

Less than 1 ETH
1-10 ETH
10-100 ETH
100-1,000 ETH
1,000 - 10,000 ETH
10,000 - 100,000 ETH
100,000 - 1,000,000 ETH

Addressable Market for the ETH Cohorts

Given the methodology of finding our cohorts, how big of a market are these cohorts for real users?

Address Count for ETH Cohorts

Source: Nansen Query

The above shows that since January 1st, 2022, every ETH cohort is in a downtrend, besides the “1,000-10,000 ETH” segment which has stayed flat at 0% change in addresses as of March 20th. Addresses with 100 ETH or less, have seen the sharpest decline in percent change with an average of 37.35% decline in addresses. As for the whales with 100 ETH or more, they were hit less hard, with an average of 26.5% decline in addresses as of March 20th.

Takeaway: As of March 20th, all ETH cohorts have seen a sharp downtrend in the number of addresses, particularly the "1-10 ETH segment and the "10-100 ETH" segment since the start of 2022.

ETH Cohort Balances

Given the addressable market, we now want to explore these ETH cohorts individually and their ETH balances over time. To make more sense of their holdings, we visualize them against the ETH price and the 30-day net change in ETH balances.

ETH Price
- The price of ETH tracked daily
ETH Balances
- Cumulative ETH balances across the cohorts
30d Net Change in ETH Balances
- 30-day net change is used to complement the cumulative balances. It can potentially reveal trends in the accumulation or distribution of ETH by different holder groups. Positive net changes indicate that holders are increasing their ETH balances, while negative net changes suggest that they are decreasing their balances. This information can help the audience gauge the sentiment among different groups of ETH holders.

Source: Nansen Query

The below chart shows the 7 day moving average of ETH balances to remove the large fluctuations. This smoothens out the visualization and better highlights the underlying trends.

Source: Nansen Query

7d Moving Average of ETH Balances

We also wanted to show the trends of the cohorts together. Below, is a stacked bar chart showing the 7 day moving averages of ETH balances across each of the segments. As expected, the larger cohorts hold a majority of ETH holding as reflected by the chart below but trends can be found relative to the aggregate ETH cohorts' balances.

Source: Nansen Query

Finally, we can view Smary Money ETH balances as its own segment.

Source: Nansen Query

ETH Cohort Address Counts

Next, we now want to explore these ETH cohorts individually and their address count over time. To make more sense of their address count, we visualize them against the ETH price and the 30-day net change in addresses. Address count is measured here to show a few things:

Growth in network usage: A positive 30-day net change in addresses indicates an increase in the number of users participating in the Ethereum ecosystem. This growth can be a sign of increased adoption, which may contribute to the overall value and utility of the network.
Activity level: A higher net change might suggest more active trading, investing, or usage of Ethereum-based applications, while a lower net change could indicate a period of reduced activity.
Market sentiment: Changes in the number of addresses can help gauge market sentiment. A positive net change might signal bullish sentiment, as more users are entering the ecosystem or creating new addresses for trading or investment purposes. On the other hand, a negative net change could indicate bearish sentiment or a decreased interest in Ethereum.

Source: Nansen Query

We combined all of the cohorts above 1,000 ETH and used a 7-day moving average for their address count to smoothen out the major fluctuations.

Source: Nansen Query

We didn't include the Smart Money address count for ETH because the number of smart wallets is increasing over time due to increased coverage for different segments from our attribution efforts. However, we can see Smart Money ETH holdings vs Smart Money address count below.

Source: Nansen Query

Although Smart Money address count continues to rise, ETH balances contine to trend downward.

Conclusion

Tracking ETH balances and addresses among investors can give a closer pulse on the crypto markets. Specifically, these cohorts are able to provide real user segments, given we only highlight EOAs engage in on-chain activities. Potential ways of utilizing the dashboards are to assess whether retail is entering the market, or if whales are buying.