Active Address
The number of distinct blockchain addresses that sent or received a transaction during a chosen period.
Active addresses are the standard usage proxy for a network, and their weakness is in the word address. One person can control thousands of addresses, and one address, such as an exchange hot wallet, can act for millions of people, so the count sits at neither the user nor the account level. Definitions vary between providers over whether receivers count, whether contract addresses are included, and whether dust and spam transactions are filtered out. On networks with very low fees, automated transactions and reward-seeking activity can lift the count substantially. Comparisons across chains are the least reliable use of the metric, since fee levels and wallet conventions differ.
In practice
A campaign that pays users for transacting can raise active addresses sharply while the number of distinct people involved changes far less.
The common misunderstanding
Active addresses are not active users: addresses cost nothing to create, and both farming and shared exchange wallets break the assumption of one address per person.
The figure this maps to
The number of distinct addresses that sent or received a transaction on the network in a day.
Limits: An active address is not a person and not a user. One individual can generate unlimited addresses at no cost, while a single exchange hot wallet can represent millions of customers behind one address, so identical user bases produce wildly different counts on a self-custody chain and on an…