Decentralization is one of the core spirits of this industry, but it does not mean eliminating centralization.
The significance of centralization is to concentrate resources and thus form economies of scale. The characteristic of economies of scale is to improve cost-benefit efficiency, and the beneficiaries of this benefit include two parties:
The first party is the user. For example, CEX has no on-chain gas fee and will also have lower transaction fees.
The other side is the platform, which invests the benefits of economies of scale into product development, so there will be more professional products. For example, the content of centralized media such as BlockRhythm and PANews will be more professional than Web3 platforms such as steem/hive.
It is precisely because of this professionalism that centralized platforms often form varying degrees of authority, and this authority is the source of trust.
❚ PENGU incident
When PENGU was launched on Binance a few days ago, Binance called the data of coinmarketcap, and the circulating market value was wrong, causing the market value of PENGU to change from more than 2 billion to about 300 million. Investors saw that the market value was low, so they bought it. As a result, the actual market value and actual selling pressure were much higher...
Coinmarketcap is a platform under Binance. Therefore, Binance did not shirk its responsibility and directly compensated users with 135 million PENGU.
But it is essentially a product problem of coinmarketcap that caused the problem of token circulation displayed on Binance. Binance has assumed this responsibility for its platforms.
❚ Market capitalization data
Coinmarketcap used to have market capitalization data available for download, including market capitalization data for the top 10 tokens.
But now there are only images and they can't be downloaded.
However, the area chart on coinmarketcap does not show the structural changes very clearly.
The market share chart does not take stablecoins into account, and does not include the changes in the market share of stablecoins, nor the market share of BTC and ETH after excluding stablecoins. (I used to calculate the market share of tokens in the non-stablecoin market, which better reflects the market value structure of tokens. But now I can’t calculate it.)
Why would a platform called "Coin Market Cap" weaken the data related to market cap? !
❚ DEX data
On the one hand, the market capitalization share data was weakened, and on the other hand, DEXSCAN was launched, mainly focusing on the MEME tokens on each chain.
I understand that we need to follow the market trends to develop products, but the premise is whether we can do a good job with the core data of circulation volume and circulation market value? ! ! ! After all, coinmarketcap is the authoritative platform for market value data!
Moreover, there is FDV data in it.
So can’t there be an FDV ranking in coinmarketcap?
❚Market capitalization ranking
The most important purpose of coinmarketcap is market capitalization ranking. When you open the homepage, you will see the ranking by market capitalization.
However, market capitalization data itself may be inflated.
For example, Brother Feng issued a token TVB, with a total of 10 billion pieces, and the current circulation is 4 billion, with a price of 1 US dollar. At this time, if Brother Feng releases 2 billion and locks it up in the form of lock-up, then the circulation market value will increase from 4 billion US dollars to 6 billion US dollars, a direct increase of 2 billion, which can greatly improve the market value ranking. And this so-called "circulation market value" increase has no cost.
Therefore, many investors now do not look at the market capitalization at all, but instead focus on the FDV indicator.
FDV is equal to the total quantity multiplied by the price. The total quantity of many tokens is fixed. This can better measure the value and growth of the project. The increase in "circulating market value" may be due to the price of the coin or the "circulating quantity", but the increase in FDV can only be due to the price of the coin.
So, can’t there be an FDV ranking in coinmarketcap? At the very least, after the circulating market value ranking, like the newly added DexScan interface, it would be OK to add FDV to the list!
➤Certik
Key message: Code security
Certik is an auditing agency and also has a project information platform based on code auditing.
❚ DEXX incident
The theft of DEXX caused the market value to point the finger at its auditing agency Certik, and some people also accused Certik of poor business capabilities.
Certik should also be given some vindication here. In the code audit history of DEXX by Certik, "centralization" is clearly written, and "vulnerable code" is especially clearly written.
❚ Interference Information
But why is it "slightly" vindicated? Looking at the project page of the Certik platform, there are three parts of security-related information.
The first piece is the code audit history.
The second part is website scanning, which is the security summary obtained by Certik after scanning the project website. When Certik scanned the DEXX website, it also prompted several "notes". However, the DEXX project only took out 9 network security items and put them into the project document through this small part.
The third part is the historical events of the project, which lists the historical events of DEXX being attacked on November 16.
These three parts actually have risk warnings, and Certik has made contributions to security. However, some comprehensive content is placed at the front of the project page, which creates interference and weakens the useful security-related information below.
For example, DeGate. Although I like this decentralized exchange DeGate very much, its so-called highlights such as the number of Twitter followers and community have nothing to do with security.
The following ratings, operations, governance, community... also have nothing to do with security.
❚ External Data
In the above figure, the DeGate code score is 54.02. It’s not because the code is bad, but because it was not audited by Certik, but by other institutions...
Regarding the bug bounty, DeGate has not established a bug bounty program on Certik. However, DeGate does have a bug bounty program on Immunefi, the most famous Web3 bug bounty platform. So which third-party platforms does this third-party bounty on Certik refer to? !
I don’t know if the audit information and bug bounty programs of other organizations require the project party to submit manually.
The problem with Certik is not necessarily a business capability issue, but rather that too much information not related to security has been added to the platform, creating interference and weakening third-party security information. As a result, when users enter the project page on the Certik platform, they see a lot of information that is not comprehensive enough, making the risk information not eye-catching enough.
➤Defillama
Key Metric: TVL
Defillama is a data platform for DeFi. As its name suggests, it should be centered on DeFi.
❚ TVL
TVL, Total Value Locked, total locked value.
Some bloggers have previously reported on the issue of TVL data.
https://x.com/DoveyWan/status/1818071282514346114
https://x.com/jason_chen998/status/1818121039848849685
For example, let's assume that Brother Feng issued TVB in the previous example, with a total of 10 billion tokens, and a current circulation of 4 billion, at a price of $1. At this time, if Brother Feng releases 2 billion, regardless of whether anyone comes to borrow, and deposits these tokens in his own lending agreement TVBLend, then the circulating market value of TVB will increase from $4 billion to $6 billion, and TVBLend's TVL will also increase by 2 billion.
And the increase in this so-called "circulating market value" comes at no cost.
In July, Feng and Jason discussed this. Five months later, DeFillama’s TVL indicator has not changed much.
Tron, which has only 34 protocols, still ranks third in TVL.
81% of the TVL of the Tron chain is in JustLend. And more than half of its TVL is TRX.
Of the deposited funds, only 2.025% is loaned out.
There is nothing wrong with Defillama calculating TVL by reading protocol data, but I hope that more indicators can be refined.
❚Bridge
Defillama also classified the protocols, one of which is – Bridge.
For this type of project, TVL is still the key indicator. For this type of project, TVL is still the key indicator.
Because the technical principles of different cross-chain ecosystems are different, the TVL of cross-chain protocols varies greatly.
For example, Axelar’s TVL is $300 million, while deBridge’s TVL is only $2 million.
TVL is static data. Since it is a cross-chain protocol, let’s take a look at the dynamic data of cross-chain capital flow:
Axelar’s cross-chain capital flow in the past 7 days was 48.9136 million US dollars, and deBridge’s cross-chain capital flow in the past 7 days was 167 million US dollars.
❚Other data
Defillama also launched other protocol data, such as Total Value Hacked, chain-to-chain data comparison, token unlocking data, CEX data, fee and income data, stablecoin data, etc.
Defillama even has ETF data, potential airdrop information, and even launched its own Swap.
It may be because of the different on-chain protocols that it is difficult to have a unified data calculation method. Most of these data are broad data, and seem to lack in-depth data mining.
➤Written at the end
The three authoritative platforms discussed in this article are authorities in the fields of market value, security, and DeFi data. What they have in common is that they are expanding the breadth of their business, while they may lack in-depth exploration in the professionalism of market value, security, and DeFi data. This is why Brother Feng uses the word "not doing their job properly" to describe it. There is no intention to deny or accuse, but just hope to obtain more detailed, in-depth, and concentrated professional products, rather than comprehensive and general products.