NVT (Network Value to Transactions)
Network value divided by the daily value moved on-chain, smoothed over about three months.
NVT compares the market value of a network with the value its ledger settles each day, using a smoothed denominator to damp daily noise. It was introduced for Bitcoin, where most economically meaningful settlement historically happened on-chain and the ledger was therefore a reasonable record of use. The construction is deliberately simple: network value on top, a moving average of daily transfer value underneath. Its usefulness depends entirely on whether the chain in question actually settles its economic activity on-chain.
How it is computed
circulating market capitalization / 90-day moving average of daily on-chain transfer value
Where it misleads
The denominator counts change outputs, self-transfers, and exchange rebalancing as settlement, and the adjustment heuristics used to remove them differ enough between providers that NVT values from two sites are not comparable. The measure systematically overstates network value for ecosystems where activity has moved into centralized exchanges, rollups, or payment channels, because that activity never appears in the denominator. The smoothing window is a free parameter, commonly 28 or 90 days, and changing it moves the level materially, so a quoted NVT without its window is not a defined quantity. On chains where a stablecoin dominates transfers, the ratio partly measures demand for a different asset entirely.
The equity comparison, and why it fails
Price-to-sales, since transaction value is treated as turnover. The analogy fails because moving a token between two addresses under the same control produces transaction value while nothing is sold, no counterparty pays anything, and no entity recognizes revenue.
Reading a high or a low value
A high value means network value is large relative to the value the chain settles daily; a low value means the chain settles a large amount relative to its market value. Historical ranges published for one asset do not transfer to another, because the share of activity that occurs on-chain differs by design.
Highest values in our coverage
Ordered by the figure alone. This is not a ranking of quality and carries no view.
