Sector indices

A sector index is a single gauge of a whole crypto sector's performance — for example, “Ethereum ecosystem tokens” or “Meme coins”. It shows how the sector's coins moved on average, weighted by market cap. Every index starts at 1,000 points, so indices of different sectors are directly comparable. Holder currently tracks 469 sector indices.

Sector indices are Holder.io's own methodology and metric. We designed the calculation and maintain the indices ourselves from open daily data, rather than reusing someone else's ready values. The metric was introduced into the project's analytics in 2026. The resulting indices are published in the sectors overview, where you can see each sector's performance, its constituents and its movers.

Source data

We use the ready market cap and volume of coins from daily data — at each day's close. Market cap is not recomputed as “price × supply”: the provider's value is used. Recalculated daily, on closed days.

Which coins enter an index

Each day a coin joins its sector's index if it:

• belongs to that sector (category);
• is active — that is, traded;
• has been listed for at least 14 days (when the listing date is known);
• has market cap and price above zero;
• has 24h volume of at least $50,000 — illiquid coins are excluded;
• is in the top 100 by market cap within the sector.

If fewer than 5 coins qualify, the index is frozen at its last value and the sector is marked inactive.

Coin weights

A coin's weight is proportional to its market cap:

wᵢ = market_capᵢ ⁄ Σ market_cap

There is a cap: no single coin may weigh more than 30%. Anything above is trimmed to 30%, and the excess is redistributed proportionally to the rest — repeated until every weight is at most 30%. This keeps one giant from defining the whole sector on its own (relevant, for instance, for the DeFi sector, where market cap is highly concentrated). With three coins or fewer the cap is mathematically impossible, so plain market weights are used.

How the index moves — the chained method

The key principle: only prices move the index level, not composition changes. When a coin enters or leaves the index, the level does not jump.

First day of a sector:  Index = 1000
Every next day:      Indexₜ = Indexₜ₋₁ × Rₜ

where Rₜ is the weighted return of yesterday's basket:

Rₜ = Σ [ wᵢ × (capᵢ,ₜ ⁄ capᵢ,ₜ₋₁) ] ⁄ Σ wᵢ

computed over coins present on both days; the weights wᵢ are yesterday's, with the same 30% cap. In short: each day the index changes by the weighted-average cap change of yesterday's basket. If a sector was inactive and “wakes up”, the level carries over with no false jump.

Rebalancing

The composition — which coins and at what weights — is re-snapshotted only when the set of coins changes: someone qualifies or drops out. The index level does not jump: continuity is guaranteed by the chained method, since the return is computed on the previous basket, not the new one.

Update frequency

The index is computed daily and forward-only: every missed day is filled up to the latest closed day that has price data. In the sectors overview, an index's “Updated” date is the date of its latest data.

What the showcase numbers mean

On the sectors page, each index shows:

• Change, % over 24h / 7d / 30d — the index level's change over the period:
  Δ% = (Indexₜ − Indexₜ₋ₙ) ⁄ Indexₜ₋ₙ × 100
• $ market cap — the sum of constituents' market caps (informational; the level itself is chained, not derived from this sum);
• N tokens — the number of coins in the sector's index;
• leaders and laggards — the top-3 gaining and top-3 falling coins by price change over the selected period.

Key parameters