What is this?

HODL Waves are a stacked area chart that visualizes the age distribution of Kaspa's entire circulating supply. Each colored band represents a cohort of UTXOs grouped by how long they have remained unspent — from less than 24 hours old to more than 3 years old. The concept was originally pioneered by Unchained Capital for Bitcoin analysis and has since become one of the most powerful on-chain tools for understanding holder behavior across any UTXO-based cryptocurrency.

For Kaspa specifically, HODL Waves are adapted to account for the network's faster block times and higher transaction throughput. Because Kaspa produces blocks every second (1 BPS), coins can move more frequently than on Bitcoin, which means the youngest age bands (24h, 1 week) tend to be more dynamic and responsive to short-term market activity. This makes Kaspa's HODL Waves particularly sensitive to shifts in trading behavior and distribution events.

The chart provides a visual fingerprint of the network's collective conviction. During bull markets, you'll typically see older bands shrink as long-term holders take profits, while younger bands expand. During accumulation phases, the opposite occurs — young coin bands compress while older bands steadily grow as holders refuse to sell.

How to use this data

When young coin bands (24h, 1 week, 1 month) dominate the chart, it signals active trading and distribution. This often corresponds to periods of high volatility, market tops, or speculative mania where coins are rapidly changing hands. A surge in the youngest bands after a prolonged quiet period may indicate that long-dormant coins are finally being moved — potentially a precursor to increased sell pressure.

Conversely, when older age bands (1 year+, 2 year+, 3 year+) are growing, it reflects strong holding conviction across the network. This pattern typically emerges during bear markets and early accumulation phases when experienced holders are absorbing supply and refusing to sell at low prices. The expansion of the oldest bands is one of the most reliable on-chain signals that a market bottom may be forming.

To identify market cycle phases, watch for the "wave" pattern: during distribution, a cascade of color shifts from older to younger bands as coins flow from long-term holders to new buyers. During accumulation, the wave reverses — young bands thin out as coins age into progressively older cohorts. These transitions often precede major price movements by weeks or months.

How it's computed

Each UTXO in the Kaspa network is timestamped by the DAA (Difficulty Adjustment Algorithm) score of the block that created it. The age of a UTXO is simply the difference between the current DAA score and the creation DAA score, converted to calendar time. Supply is then bucketed into age bands: <1d, 1d–1w, 1w–1m, 1m–3m, 3m–6m, 6m–12m, 1y–2y, 2y–3y, 3y–5y, and >5y.

The computation scans the full UTXO set from our RocksDB secondary instance, classifies each output by age, and sums the KAS value within each band. Results are sampled at regular intervals to produce the time series. Because this requires iterating over millions of UTXOs, the data is computed on a backend indexer and cached — the chart updates approximately once per hour.

It's important to note that HODL Waves measure UTXO age, not wallet age. A single holder who consolidates UTXOs will reset the age clock for those coins, causing them to appear in younger bands even though the holder's conviction hasn't changed. This is an inherent limitation of UTXO-based age analysis and should be considered when interpreting sudden shifts in the distribution.