Active Addresses
The count of unique addresses transacting in a period — a rough proxy for network usage and adoption.
Active addresses counts the unique addresses sending or receiving a network’s coins over a time window. It’s one of the oldest network-health proxies: rising active addresses suggest growing usage and adoption, while sustained declines can signal fading interest.
Its limits are real. One person can control thousands of addresses (and often does), exchange and contract activity distort the count, and Layer 2 usage doesn’t show up on the base chain. So it’s directional, not precise. Still, as a component of ratios like NVT and as a long-term adoption trend, active-address data remains a fixture of fundamental on-chain analysis.