How many hyphens do I need when I add '-based' to a noun phrase?

Question

Markov chain-based or Markov-chain-based?

The full sentence:

It resembles black-hat SEO and its Markov chain-based keyword stuffing techniques.

What is the rule?

Answer 1

There is no single, widely accepted standard for hyphenation. If you're writing for an institution that has a style guide, you could check that, but in general, either hyphenation is acceptable.

I think in this case I personally would use the full hyphenated string ('Markov-chain-based') just because the sentence has a bunch of adjectives jammed together, and it might help the reader keep track of which words go together.