Weighted average age of all ZEC held in transparent addresses, computed from snapshots of the unspent transaction output (UTXO) set. Each UTXO is bucketed by age (<30d, 30-180d, 180d-1y, 1-3y, 3y+) and the mean is computed using bucket midpoints weighted by ZEC value.
Unlike the flow-based residency estimate, this uses ground-truth UTXO data — when old coins get spent, the mean drops immediately. The 3y+ bucket uses 5 years as a midpoint, which is conservative.
This is one number: the value-weighted average age of transparent ZEC. Two things are true of it before anything else:
It covers the transparent minority. Coins in a shielded pool carry no publicly readable age, so they are not absent by choice — they are uncountable. Nothing here describes how long Zcash holders have held.
A coin leaving is not a coin sold. Transparent ZEC that gets shielded exits this data entirely, and from here that is indistinguishable from a spend. Check the shielding rate before reading a fall as distribution.
Weighted by value, not by output. One dormant exchange-era output outweighs thousands of small fresh ones, so this tracks where the VALUE sits, not where the wallets are. It is computed from real UTXO snapshots bucketed by age, so it is measured rather than inferred from flows.
It rises on its own. Every day nothing moves, every coin gets a day older and the mean drifts up. A flat line means enough turnover to offset that; only a FALL is coins actually moving.