Aggregate market analysis has become a challenge since the digital asset space has fragmented into thousands of assets, sectors, and rapidly changing market-cap cohorts. As assets appreciate, decline, launch, or disappear, aggregate metric series develop structural discontinuities that make long-term analysis difficult.
Previously, we showcased the power of global views that aggregate metrics across the market using our Multi-Asset Explorer. We have now extended this framework with Glassnode Global Metrics — a suite of formally rebalanced aggregate metrics with continuous index normalization, available via API.
In this article, we introduce the framework, examine several examples across market capitalization, profitability, and derivatives positioning, and show what continuity-adjusted indices reveal relative to raw aggregates.
What are Glassnode Global Metrics?
Global Metrics are aggregated on-chain and market metrics computed across multiple cryptocurrencies, organized into configurable baskets. Baskets can be defined by market capitalization thresholds, top-N rankings (by any metric), or asset tags (sectors, categories). They solve a fundamental challenge in crypto analytics: how to track on-chain and market metrics across a highly dynamic group of assets over time without artificial discontinuities caused by basket composition changes, in contrast to indices that focus on price alone.
We provide two output types for each metric:
- Raw Aggregates: True values in original units preserving economic meaning (e.g., USD for market cap, counts for active addresses)
- Indices: Scaling-factor-adjusted, base-normalized time series for trend analysis and cross-basket comparison
What the indices reveal
Market structure: the 2024 small-cap surge
The clearest demonstration of why continuity-adjusted indices matter is the small-cap tier in 2024. The below figure presents Total Market Cap: Raw aggregate (USD, log scale) across all four baskets: All Coins, Large, Mid and Small Cap, with BTC price overlaid.
Compare to the Total Market Cap Index: scaled index (base 100) across the same four baskets. Each tier starts at 100, hence the lines are directly comparable as growth multiples.
The raw small-cap series contains a structural bias: whenever a small-cap asset performs well, it eventually crosses the $100M threshold and leaves the basket, taking its gains with it. In other words, "winners leave". The raw aggregate is, by design, incapable of capturing a small-cap rally.
The index neutralizes this effect. Small-cap shot up dramatically in 2024, a move largely invisible in the raw series, driven by near-instant token creation platforms and the memecoin mania that followed.
The same chart also highlights the divergence across tiers: while large caps held up relatively well, altcoin tiers entered a prolonged drawdown. Both halves only become legible in the index.
Profit-taking Sentiment: Altcoin SOPR vs BTC SOPR
Spent Output Profit Ratio (SOPR), which measures whether coins moving on-chain are being spent at a profit (above 1) or a loss (below 1), is one of the clearest cases where a global metric adds value beyond the single-asset version. BTC SOPR and the median SOPR across altcoin baskets frequently diverge, and the spread between them becomes a signal in itself.
The following figure shows Median SOPR: Raw aggregate across all four baskets, BTC price overlaid. SOPR oscillates around 1.
Compare to the Median SOPR: scaled index (base 100), across the same four baskets.
The raw series tells the following story: small-cap SOPR crashes to levels comparable to the 2018 and 2022 bear markets, while large and mid caps have held up better in recent cycles. The index adds an additional nuance: because appreciated small-cap coins keep leaving the basket as they grow into higher tiers, the raw series overstates how bad sentiment is for the assets that actually remain.
Adjusted for this, small-cap sentiment is more stable than it appears. For large and mid caps no such correction applies, and what the index reveals is a genuine long-term trend: each cycle, the average holder in established assets extracts slightly less profit than the one before. As more supply locks into long-term holding, less of it cycles through at a profit.
Rather than relying on selected tokens as proxies for altcoin sentiment, the global SOPR index provides a cohort-level read directly. No need to cherry-pick individual tokens.
Derivatives Positioning: Open Interest
Open Interest (OI) measures the total value of outstanding perpetual futures contracts and provides a useful proxy for leverage concentration across the market.
The below figure presents Total Open Interest: Raw aggregate (USD, log scale) across all four baskets, data from 2022.
Compare to the Total Open Interest Index: scaled (base 100) across the same four baskets.
Large cap dominates open interest in absolute terms; most leverage sits on the biggest, most liquid assets. The index, however, makes the behavior of the smaller tiers comparable: mid- and small-cap open interest is far more volatile, spiking sharply during speculative episodes and unwinding just as fast. These spikes are a useful early-warning signal for cascade risk in the more fragile parts of the market.
The continuity-adjusted framework makes these shifts easier to isolate by separating changes in leverage behavior from changes in cohort composition.
The Glassnode Global Metric Suite
Four metrics are live with this release, each computed for all four baskets, sixteen time series in total. All use weekly rebalancing and equal weighting.
The baskets are the market-cap tiers used throughout this paper:
- All Coins (no filter)
- Large Cap (≥$1B)
- Mid Cap ($100M–$1B)
- Small Cap (<$100M).
Eligibility filtering, start dates, and the choice of sum versus median aggregation are covered in the appendix.
Accessing the Data via API
Each metric is published in two forms. 1) The raw aggregate preserves the original units (discontinuous at rebalances) and is intended to use for absolute sizing and point-in-time snapshots. 2) The index is scaled, base-100, and continuous, making it more suitable for trend analysis and cross-basket comparison.
Raw and index versions are served from separate endpoints, and each endpoint returns all baskets for that metric:
https://api.glassnode.com/v1/metrics/global/{metric}_{aggregation}_{rebalancing}_{weighting}_index
For full request details, please see the Glassnode API documentation. The framework is extensible (additional metrics, alternative weightings, and tag-based sector baskets are planned), but the four metrics above are live today, and they already bring the continuity discipline of traditional price indices to on-chain and market data for a market that is increasingly multi-asset.
Methodology
Full details on basket selection, eligibility filtering, scaling-factor formulas, and index normalization, please reach out to your account manager for access.
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Disclaimer: This report is for informational and educational purposes only. The analysis represents a limited case study with significant constraints and should not be interpreted as investment advice or definitive trading signals. Past performance patterns do not guarantee future results. Always conduct thorough due diligence and consider multiple factors before making investment decisions.
