Transaction Rankings

Transaction Rankings

Overview

Some applications and on-chain standards listed on cardano.org are ranked according to their on-chain transaction activity. This ranking is purely data-driven and is intended to help users discover applications and protocols that are currently seeing meaningful real-world usage within the Cardano ecosystem.

Methodology

To determine transaction activity, we aggregate and correlate multiple on-chain and off-chain data sources, including:

• Transaction labels, used to associate transactions with known applications or use cases.
• The CIP-0010 registry, used to verify which transaction metadata labels are registered standards.
• Script hashes, mapped to applications using curated registries:
  • The CRFA off-chain data registry
  • The Cardano contracts registry maintained by StricaHQ
  • The Eternl script registry

By combining these sources, we can more reliably attribute transactions to specific applications and calculate relative activity levels.

The ranking script

The rankings are produced by an open-source script: cardano-foundation/tx-leaderboard-script.

It connects to a Cardano db-sync database, reads the latest fully completed epochs, and combines the on-chain data with the registries listed above. Each run emits two reports:

• A 30-day window (6 epochs)
• A 1-year window (73 epochs)

These reports are committed to this repository as src/data/tx-stats.json and src/data/tx-stats-73epochs.json, which power the leaderboard's 30-day and 1-year toggle.

Important notes

• Rankings reflect usage activity, not endorsement, code quality, security, or governance maturity.
• Data quality depends on the completeness and accuracy of available labels and registries; unlabelled or newly deployed contracts may be underrepresented.
• Rankings are periodically updated as new on-chain data becomes available. (currently not real time)

This approach aims to balance transparency, reproducibility, and practical usefulness for users exploring the Cardano application ecosystem.

Current Implementation

Transaction-based rankings are currently displayed on:

• Leaderboard - unified ranking of apps and on-chain metadata standards by transaction volume, with 30-day and 1-year period toggle
• AppGrid Component - on the Where to get ada page
• AppList Component

Apps with transaction data show:

• Total transaction count for the selected period
• Ranking position within their category e.g., #1, #2, #3 (optional)
• Gold badges for top 3 positions (optional)

Important Notes

Not All Apps Are Tracked Yet

Not all applications' transactions are currently being tracked. If your app is not ranked or shows lower numbers than expected, your transactions may not be identifiable on-chain yet.

How to Get Your Transactions Tracked

There are three paths to appear on the leaderboard, depending on how your project uses the Cardano blockchain.

Path 1: App Tracking (Smart Contracts / Script Hashes)

If your project deploys smart contracts on Cardano, your transactions are attributed via script hashes mapped through curated registries (CRFA, StricaHQ, Eternl).

To appear on the leaderboard with your app's icon and details:

1. Add your application to src/data/apps.js (see Add your Application)
2. Include a statsLabel field in your entry that matches your label in the stats data
3. The matching logic checks for an exact match on statsLabel, with a fallback to normalized title matching

Example:

{
  title: "Your Project",
  statsLabel: "yourproject",  // must match the label in tx-stats.json
  // ... other fields
}

Path 2: Metadata-Based Tracking (CIP-20 and Other CIPs)

Cardano transactions can carry structured metadata using numeric labels. Transactions using verified metadata labels are automatically tracked and ranked on the leaderboard alongside apps.

CIP-20 Transaction Messages is the most widely used metadata standard. It allows attaching human-readable messages to any Cardano transaction using metadata label 674.

JSON format:

{
  "674": {
    "msg": [
      "Your message here (max 64 bytes per string)"
    ]
  }
}

Key details:

• Each string in the msg array is limited to 64 bytes
• Multiple strings are concatenated for display
• Messages are stored permanently on-chain
• See the official spec: CIP-20 - Transaction message/comment metadata

A metadata label counts as verified when it is registered in the CIP-0010 registry. Other verified metadata standards that are automatically tracked include:

Label	Standard	Category
674	CIP-20 Transaction Messages	General
721	CIP-25 NFT Token Standard	Minting
777	CIP-27 Royalties Standard	Minting
94	CIP-94 Governance Polls	Governance
1694	Voltaire Governance	Governance
61284	CIP-15 Catalyst Registration	Governance
61285	CIP-15 Catalyst Witness	Governance
87/88	Milkomeda Protocol	Bridge
1226	Oracle Metadata	Oracle

Path 3: CIP-20 Message Allowlist (for apps without smart contracts)

This path is only for apps whose sole on-chain identifier is a CIP-20 (label 674) message - for example tools built around certificates plus a message, with no Plutus scripts to register. If you have contracts, use Path 1 instead; it is more complete.

You get per-app attribution by adding an entry to the curated allowlist data/cip20_apps.json in the tx-leaderboard-script repository via a pull request. Each entry maps a message pattern to your app:

{
  "label": "unfrack.it",
  "displayName": "Unfrack.it",
  "match": ["unfrack"],
  "matchType": "substring"
}

• label - a stable identifier (lowercase). Used as the appStats label, so it can also be your statsLabel in src/data/apps.js.
• displayName - the name shown on the leaderboard.
• match - one or more patterns to look for in your transaction message. A pattern must appear verbatim in the message exactly as your app writes it on-chain. Matching is case-insensitive but otherwise literal, so include any punctuation the message contains. Example: unfrack.it tags transactions with https://unfrack.it, so unfrack or unfrack.it both work, but unfrack it does not.
• matchType - substring matches when the pattern appears anywhere in the message (use this for a stable tag, e.g. messages like [adalink] ... with pattern adalink). exact matches only when the whole message equals the pattern.

Guidelines for acceptance:

• Pick a pattern distinctive to your app. Generic words like cardano or swap will be rejected - they would falsely match unrelated transactions.
• Confirm your transactions actually carry the tag, and that it does not collide with another listed app.
• This list is intentionally limited to contract-less apps. Apps with scripts should use Path 1.

How It All Connects

The data flow from blockchain to leaderboard:

1. On-chain transactions are processed by the tx-leaderboard-script pipeline
2. The pipeline produces tx-stats.json (30-day) and tx-stats-73epochs.json (1-year), each containing two arrays:
   • appStats: transactions attributed to applications via script hashes
   • metadataLabelStats: transactions using registered metadata labels
3. The leaderboard page merges both arrays (verified metadata only) and ranks everything by transaction count
4. appStats entries are matched to src/data/apps.js via the statsLabel field to display icons, descriptions, and website links
5. metadataLabelStats entries are verified against the CIP-0010 registry, shown with their CIP description, and mapped to existing categories (Governance, Bridge, Minting, etc.)

Both types of entries are ranked together in a single unified leaderboard, giving a complete picture of what is driving on-chain activity on Cardano.

For questions or to request tracking for your project, please reach out via GitHub Issues.