A list of token holders at a specific time

Question

What's the best way to get the list of token(ERC20) holders with their balance at a specific time? Thank you.

Answer 1

ERC-20 tokens do not maintain an iterable list of current token holders, the used mapping type allows you only to check for a known address - balance. To get a list of all token holders, you need to process this offline and build it yourself from blockchain data.

I have created a standalone tool which collects ERC-20 token holders and transactions to SQLite database

• Take a token contract address

• Iterate over all Transfer events for token using eth_getLogs JSON-RPC API

• Build a local database of these events

• Allow you to use SQL to query any account balance on any point of time (block num) by just running a SUM() of account balances changes between blocks 1 - end block.

You can find the command line application execution example how to build the token holder database here

The core Python logic is here.

There are some quirks here and there: for example detecting mint / creation event for some tokens is not straightforward. Thus, you will may negative balance on the account receiving initial total supply if you rely on Transfer event only.

Answer 2

This method does not always work, however it doesn't require writing code.

1. Go to the etherscan page of the token you want to get the token holders from. (ie https://etherscan.io/token/0xdac17f958d2ee523a2206206994597c13d831ec7#balances)

2. Click on the little graph icon under the analytics column of the holders table.

3. The new page that pops up has a graph of the token balance over time. Check if it held the token at the specific time that you wanted.

This won't be too useful if the token has many holders, however, for tokens with less holders or if you just need one address that held the token at a specific time for testing, this works great!

Answer 3

Alternatively, you can use blockchain data APIs that have indexed data. Bitquery for example, has a token holder API that gives you the exact count and details of token holders at a point in time.

Examples:

• https://docs.bitquery.io/docs/examples/token-holders/token-holder-api/#token-balance-of-an-address-on-particular-date
• https://docs.bitquery.io/docs/examples/token-holders/token-holder-api/#total-token-holder-count

Full disclosure, I work at Bitquery

Answer 4

I think the easiest way to get this done, is to use The Graph.

Then in a similar way to @mikko-ohtamaa's answer store the Transfer events.

You can get it done with no code, if using the graph as it will generate all code.

So in sort, follow their guide https://thegraph.com/docs/en/quick-start/

After the graph is deployed just do a simple graphQL query and done