Data Sources & Methodology

The Metal Blockchain P-Chain RPC is our authoritative source for every on-chain number. It powers five things: (1) our own node's live data — uptime, stake weight, delegation fee, validation-period dates, active delegators, and remaining capacity — behind the Overview page and the Node Health and Delegations tabs of Track Record; (2) the network-wide validator set behind the Validator Browser, covering every active validator on the network; (3) the current circulating METAL supply, which feeds the remaining-supply factor used in every reward estimate; (4) live, on-demand lookups of any node you compare — whether you enter it on the Compare page or open a comparison straight from the Validator Browser; and (5) the stored transaction record — every delegation and validator transaction on our node since August 7, 2024 — behind the Delegations tab, the participation table and Delegation Insights.

Our own node is polled about every 5 minutes and stored in the database, and the network-wide validator list is refreshed on the same ~5-minute cadence. Current supply is refreshed hourly, and uptime is snapshotted every 4 hours. The dashboard shows the most recent stored snapshot, and the status bar shows when it was captured — "Node data updated X ago." The page itself re-checks our server every minute. If our node's snapshot stops refreshing for more than about two polling cycles (~11 minutes) — whether from a stuck poller or an upstream RPC outage — an amber banner flags that live data may be delayed, while the most recent stored figures stay on screen. If the page cannot reach our server at all, a red banner notes that live data is unavailable and is being retried each minute. Comparison lookups — whether run from the Compare page or opened from the Validator Browser — are fetched live when you run them and are not stored.

The feed reports stake as a value the network calls "weight," measured in nMETAL (the smallest unit of METAL). For our own node it also includes a "potentialReward" — a live, in-progress estimate of the validator's own reward that shifts a little every time it is checked. You will see this on the Overview page as the "Validator's Estimated Reward," clearly labeled as a live estimate, and we deliberately keep it out of the Delegate page calculator so the numbers you use to plan a delegation do not move every time you reload. For the network-wide list, the RPC reports only aggregate delegation figures per validator — a delegator count and total delegated weight — not a per-delegator breakdown; full per-delegator detail exists only for our own node. Our own node's detailed snapshots are kept in full for 30 days, then condensed to one per day, and removed after two years, so the Node Activity feed's capacity and total-staked milestones are dated as the first time that crossing was observed in the history we retain — they can shift later as old snapshots are condensed, never earlier. Delegation-count milestones come from the delegation records themselves and are exact. The capacity-opening schedule on the Overview is an estimate built from each active delegation's end date (UTC): nothing is reserved, and a delegator may renew or someone else may delegate into freed room first. The per-period participation table on Track Record counts delegation transactions, not unique people (one wallet can place several), and delegation history covers every period since August 7, 2024. If a figure is ever unavailable, the table says "Not recorded" rather than showing zero. Peak and average capacity used in that table are rebuilt from the delegation transactions and measured against each period's own limit, with the average weighted by time. The delegation fee comes from our daily readings when available, otherwise from the period's starting rate on the validator transaction (marked †).

The current METAL/USD spot price (and its 24-hour change), used to display USD equivalents alongside METAL figures throughout the site and to drive the price shown in the header. CoinGecko also provides the recent daily closing prices on the Price History page — every daily close from June 8, 2025 onward comes from CoinGecko.

The spot price is refreshed about every 5 minutes, and the daily closing-price history is updated hourly. The figure displayed may be a few minutes old.

CoinGecko's free data reaches back only about 365 days, which is why its daily closes on this site begin on June 8, 2025; earlier dates are covered by CryptoCompare (below). CoinGecko prices reflect broad market rates and may differ from prices on specific exchanges. All USD figures on this site are informational estimates only and should not be used for tax reporting or financial accounting without independent verification.

Daily closing prices on the Price History page for dates before CoinGecko's range begins — covering August 7, 2024 (the validator's launch) through June 7, 2025. From June 8, 2025 onward, closes come from CoinGecko.

A one-time historical backfill stored in our database; it does not update. CryptoCompare's free historical data is no longer available, so these earlier closes are preserved as stored records, with a clean handoff to CoinGecko at June 8, 2025.

Historical closes are point-in-time daily figures and may differ slightly from other price sources. Like every USD figure here, they are informational only.

Used to add human-friendly details the raw P-Chain RPC does not carry. On the Validator Browser: each node's name and the software version it runs, plus the "network version" (the version most validators are running) so a node can be flagged as current, outdated, or unknown. In a comparison, whether opened from the Compare page or the Validator Browser: the compared node's name, software version, and first-ever validation date. On Track Record's Performance tab: each completed period links out to its on-chain validation transaction on the explorer, so any record can be independently verified.

Explorer details for the Validator Browser are refreshed alongside the validator list, about every 5 minutes, and held in memory only. Compare lookups happen live when you open a comparison and are briefly cached. Nothing from the explorer is stored long-term. The Performance links are plain outbound links built from transaction IDs already in our own records — no data is fetched from the explorer to create them.

This is a public, third-party service with no guarantees, so we treat anything it returns as a helpful extra — never as a source of truth. Not every validator reports a name or version, so some appear without one (we fill in known operators from our own curated list where we can). If the explorer is slow or unavailable, the Validator Browser and Compare pages still load from the authoritative RPC using the node ID.