How to read an asset research file, tab by tab

An asset file on this site is one page per asset, divided into tabs because the questions people bring to an asset are not a single question. The market tab describes what the asset trades at and how much of it changes hands; the supply tab describes how many units exist and how that number is changing; the fee and valuation tabs describe what users pay to use the network and how that compares with the market value of the asset. The tabs are kept apart deliberately, so that a figure measured over a period is never silently mixed with a figure measured at an instant.

The header fixes identity before it shows numbers

Above the tabs, the file states what the asset actually is: its name and ticker, its position on the sector map, and whether it is the native asset of its own chain or a token issued under a token standard on a chain someone else operates. That distinction changes the meaning of nearly everything below it. A native asset pays for block space and, on most networks, is the thing staked or mined to secure the chain. A token issued on another chain does neither; the fees paid to move it belong to the host chain, not to the token, and they appear on the host chain's file rather than this one.

Four figures sit in the header: price, market capitalization, fully diluted valuation and rank. Market capitalization is price multiplied by circulating supply. It is an arithmetic product, not a record of money that has entered the asset: the most recent trade sets the price applied to every unit in existence, including units that have not moved for years. Fully diluted valuation applies that same price to a larger supply figure, so the distance between the two is a statement about units that do not yet circulate, not about present demand.

Market and supply run on two different clocks

The market tab changes continuously. It carries the trailing return series — 24-hour, 30-day and longer windows — alongside reported volume and turnover, which expresses volume as a fraction of market capitalization so that a large asset and a small one can be placed on the same scale. Volume is reported by trading venues rather than observed on a chain, which is why it is presented with its source attached and why the wash trading entry in the glossary is worth reading before treating it as a measure of interest.

The supply tab changes on a schedule rather than on a tick. It carries circulating supply, total supply, maximum supply where one exists, and the annual issuance rate. The design that governs those numbers is described by the asset's emission schedule: Bitcoin's halving of the block subsidy roughly every four years is one such rule, and a fixed per-block issuance with no cap is another. Where a network destroys units as part of transaction processing, the burn appears here too, and net rather than gross issuance is the figure that describes supply growth. The cross-asset version of this tab is the supply section.

Activity and fees describe what the network is being used for

The activity tab counts things that happen on the chain: daily transactions, active addresses, and where it is meaningful, settled value. An active address is an address that appeared in a transaction, not a person; one individual may control hundreds of addresses and one exchange address may act for millions of customers. The count is a usable time series for a single chain and a poor basis for ranking chains against each other, which is the subject of a later article in this track.

The fee tab records what users paid for that activity. It carries daily and 30-day fee totals, the median transaction fee, and on networks where a portion of the fee is destroyed rather than paid out, the value burned. Ethereum's EIP-1559 change in 2021 introduced exactly that split, separating a base fee that is destroyed from a priority fee paid to the block producer. Because of splits like this, the total paid by users and the amount received by any one group are different numbers, and the fee tab labels which one it is showing. The fee section holds the same series for every covered asset.

Valuation borrows equity vocabulary and does not inherit equity meaning

The valuation tab holds ratios such as market capitalization to fees and network value to transactions. These look like the multiples used for listed companies, and the resemblance stops at the shape of the formula. Fees are gross payments made by users during a window; they are not earnings. There is no cost of goods sold, no tax line, no accrual accounting and no audit. In most cases the holder of the asset has no legal claim on the fees at all, and where a fee switch exists it is a governance decision that can be turned on or off. A ratio computed from fees measures the size of the market value relative to measured usage. It does not measure how much of that usage reaches the holder.

Some tabs appear only where the underlying thing exists

An asset file shows a staking tab only for networks that use proof of stake, where the staked share of supply and the inflation-adjusted staking yield are defined. It shows a total value locked tab only where contracts take custody of user assets, and total value locked is then a count of deposits, not of revenue. It shows a regulated-product tab where an exchange-traded product holds the asset, which for bitcoin dates from the United States spot approvals of January 2024, and a corporate-holdings tab where public companies disclose positions. Those sections mirror staking, total value locked, exchange-traded products and treasury holdings. The absence of a tab is information: it usually means the mechanism does not exist for that asset rather than that data is missing.

The last two tabs carry no headline number. The risk tab is a written description of the failure modes that apply to that specific asset, drawn from a fixed vocabulary that includes smart contract risk, custody risk and centralization risk. The incident tab is a dated log of events that actually occurred, each with a primary source. Both are maintained by hand, and both state what is not known as plainly as what is.

A good way to become fluent in the layout is to open two files that are structurally different — bitcoin, a proof-of-work asset with no staking or contract tabs, and ethereum, which has both — and note which tabs each one lacks. The next article in this track explains the four labels attached to every individual figure, and the methodology page gives the definitions those labels point to.