Token Distribution Statistics - Measuring Holder Concentration

Knowing how many people hold a token is useful. Knowing how the supply is spread among those holders is more useful. Two tokens can both have 50,000 holders, but if one has 80% of supply in 10 wallets and the other is spread across thousands, they are very different investments.

HolderScan provides several metrics to measure token distribution. This article covers what each one means and how to read them.

Distribution Statistics

The Distribution Statistics section shows three metrics that summarize how evenly a token's supply is spread across its holders.

Distribution Statistics for a Solana token

Distribution Score

A value between 0 and 100, derived from the Gini coefficient:

The Gini coefficient measures inequality across the entire holder base - it looks at how unequal holdings are across every single holder, not just the largest ones. A score of 100 would mean every holder owns exactly the same amount. A score of 0 would mean a single wallet holds the entire supply. In practice, most tokens fall somewhere between 1 and 15. A score of 4.09, like in the example above, indicates that holdings are concentrated among a relatively small group of large holders, which is typical for many tokens.

HHI (Herfindahl-Hirschman Index)

The HHI is a standard measure of market concentration, originally used in economics to measure competition between companies. It is calculated by squaring each holder's share of the total supply and summing the results:

Because it squares each share, large holders have an outsized effect on the score. The scale runs from 0 to 10,000. Zero means perfectly even distribution. 10,000 means a single holder controls everything.

For reference, an HHI below 100 is considered low concentration. The example above shows an HHI of 55, meaning supply is not heavily concentrated in a few wallets. By contrast, a token with an HHI above 2,500 would signal that a small number of holders control a large share of supply.

Distribution Score vs HHI

These two metrics approach the same question from different angles. The Distribution Score (Gini-based) measures inequality across the entire holder population. The HHI measures how much the biggest holders dominate. A token could have a low HHI (no single whale dominates) but still have a low Distribution Score (most holders have tiny amounts while a broader group of medium holders controls most of the supply). In the example above, the HHI of 55 is very low, meaning supply is not dominated by a few wallets. But the Distribution Score of 4.09 is also low, meaning holdings are still very unequal across the full population. This makes sense when you look at the Holder Breakdown below: over 83% of holders have less than $100 worth of the token.

Median Holder

This shows the rank of the median holder when holders are sorted by quantity held. A value of #56 means that the holder ranked 56th by position size is at the midpoint of the total supply. Half the supply is held by holders ranked above #56, and half by those ranked below. A lower number means supply is concentrated at the top. A higher number means it takes more holders to account for half the supply.

Holder Distribution

The Holder Distribution section shows what percentage of the total supply is held by different groups of top holders.

Supply concentration across top holder groups

In this example, the single largest holder owns 1.45% of supply. The top 10 holders together own 11.53%. The top 100 hold 65.61%. This tells you how quickly supply concentrates as you move up the ranking. If the top 10 holders control more than 50% of supply, the token is heavily concentrated and large sell-offs from a few wallets could have a significant impact on price.

Holder Breakdown

The Holder Breakdown groups holders into size categories based on the USD value of their position:

• Shrimp - under $10
• Crab - $10 to $100
• Fish - $100 to $1,000
• Dolphin - $1,000 to $10,000
• Whale - over $10,000

Holder distribution by position size category

In this token, 43.85% of holders are Shrimp (under $10) and another 39.24% are Crabs ($10-$100). That means over 83% of holders have less than $100 worth of the token. Only 0.43% qualify as Whales. This kind of breakdown helps you understand the holder base beyond just a total number. A token where most holders are Shrimp and Crabs looks very different from one where Dolphins and Whales make up a larger share.

Holder Breakdown Over Time

The graph section includes a Holder Breakdown chart that shows how these categories change over time. This is a stacked area chart where each layer represents one of the holder size categories.

Holder Breakdown over 30 days - stacked by category

This chart makes it easy to see whether growth is coming from small holders or large ones. If the Shrimp layer is growing quickly while the Whale layer stays flat, the token is attracting lots of small positions but not institutional or large-holder interest. If the Dolphin and Whale layers are expanding, larger holders are accumulating.

Why Distribution Matters

Concentration risk is one of the main things investors look at when evaluating a token. If a small group controls most of the supply, they can move the price significantly by selling. Tokens with more distributed holdings tend to have more stable price action because no single holder has enough supply to cause a major drop on their own.

Distribution metrics are also relevant for governance tokens, where voting power is tied to token holdings. A token where the top 10 holders control 80% of supply effectively has 10 people making decisions for everyone.

You can explore distribution statistics for any token on holderscan.com.