Total ZEC in transparent addresses grouped by how many transactions separate each coin from its original coinbase reward. Coinbase = direct mining output, 1 hop = first spend of mined coins, 2-3 hops = coins that have moved a few times, 4+ hops = well-circulated coins.
Coins that have only moved once from coinbase may be mining payouts sitting in exchange wallets or custodians. Higher-depth coins indicate active economic use. Built by replaying all blocks and tracking the maximum input depth for each transaction.
This is transparent ZEC by how many hops separate it from the coinbase that minted it. 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.
Depth is not age. A coin mined in 2017 and never spent is at depth 0 forever; a coin mined last week and passed along four times is at depth 4. This asks how far value has travelled from mining, not how long it has sat.
Depth 0 and 1 are mostly mining infrastructure. Pool payouts are the first hop out of a coinbase, so the shallow bands are largely miners being paid rather than a population choosing to hold.