Data Finalization

The latest released datapoint can be subject to change.

Before a block is included into the computation of a metric we wait until a block is confirmed:

• BTC: 1 block confirmation

• ETH + ERC20 Tokens: 12 blocks confirmation

• LTC: 6 blocks confirmation

The reason to wait for block confirmations is to reduce the amount of data changes, e.g. by reducing the probability of initial inclusion of orphan blocks.

Nonetheless, waiting for block confirmations leads to the fact that not always all blocks relevant to the last interval are included, and therefore the computation of the last datapoint of a metric can be initially incomplete.

Example for a Bitcoin metric at a 1d resolution:

At 00:00 UTC the metric updater will be triggered in order to create the last day's datapoint. Because we wait for a 1 block confirmation before the data of that block is included in the computation of the metric, at this moment there might be still a block missing for that last interval (the previous day in this case). In the next metric updater execution (in case of daily metrics that's 10 minutes later) that last block (if confirmed by a subsequent block) will be finally included into the last datapoint and therefore the value of that last datapoint might slightly change. Depending on the block interval, the latest datapoint might also be only updated and complete at later metric updater executions.

Sidenote:

• BTC and LTC all do not enforce monotonic timestamp sequences (e.g. block #10 can have a timestamp that is earlier than the timestamp of block #9). This happens only very rarely, but it means that there is a possibility that a new block is added to the blockchain with a timestamp that is earlier than the last block. If this happens, the datapoint of the interval where this timestamp resides in, will change.