<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/span><\/p>\nOur Review Process<\/h2>\n
Our thorough and comprehensive review process goes through many stages to ensure a well-balanced and honest assessment. After years of honing our review process, we aim to address essential features, everything from security measures to the user experience to help ensure that our community is well equipped to make informed decisions. Our primary responsibility is the safety of users in the crypto industry, so we conduct thorough due diligence and do our best to ensure that any risks are adequately highlighted.<\/p>\n
Here is our multi-step approach to evaluating cryptocurrencies and blockchain projects<\/p>\n
Step 1. Preliminary Research<\/h3>\n
We have dozens, if not hundreds of projects reach out to us consistently, asking for us to review them. Then, of course, there are the dozens more crypto projects that crop up every week that we encounter from crypto Twitter, Reddit forums, news aggregators, and the like. While we would like to take the time to review every project that comes across our desk, it simply is not possible.\u00a0 Our first step is looking at the team, the project, the community, and tokenomic distribution.<\/p>\n
There are always exceptions, but more or less, if we see the following, it\u2019s a pass right off the start and we don\u2019t want to waste our time reviewing:<\/p>\n
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\n- <\/i> Anonymous founders<\/span><\/li>\n
- <\/i> The hundredth Uniswap clone (failing to innovate)<\/span><\/li>\n
- <\/i> Token distribution heavily benefits team & founders<\/li>\n
- <\/i> No community<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/span><\/p>\nStep 2. Market Fit, Team, Utility, Use Cases, and Potential<\/h3>\n
At this stage, we like to take a look at and assess the project from a high-level overview. We look into the credentials and experience of the founders, check to see if there is a market fit and need for the project, if there is real utility behind the project, the use cases and hurdles the project aims to overcome, and if there is potential.<\/p>\n
These are the basic boxes we want to see checked at this stage:<\/p>\n
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\n- <\/i> Is there a need for this technology or project?<\/li>\n
- <\/i> Are the team and developers qualified with good experience?<\/li>\n
- <\/i> Is this project meeting a needed use case or overcoming a hurdle?<\/span><\/li>\n
- <\/i> Is there market fit and is the industry over-saturated with similar projects?<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/span><\/p>\nStep 3. Community, Reviews, and Socials<\/h3>\n
Community engagement plays a key role in evaluating the legitimacy and sustainability of any cryptocurrency project. A strong, active community often signals a project\u2019s long-term potential, while poor engagement can be a red flag. We assess not only the size of a community but also the quality of interaction\u2014how involved and supportive its members are, and whether there\u2019s ongoing, meaningful dialogue.<\/p>\n
We also closely monitor how responsive the development team is to user concerns, bug fixes, and updates. This helps gauge the commitment to maintaining and improving the project over time. To ensure a comprehensive review, we analyze conversations and trends across a variety of platforms, including Reddit, X (formerly Twitter), and Telegram groups, as well as other popular crypto forums.<\/p>\n
Step 4. Diving into Metrics, Data, and Technicals<\/h3>\n
Steps 1-3 largely revolve around collecting what we refer to as \u201csoft data.\u201d Much of the findings uncovered during these steps are based on hearsay, speculation, the biases, opinions, and beliefs from community members and ourselves based on our own experience and history in dealing with crypto projects.<\/p>\n
Step 4 is where we start gathering \u201chard data\u201d, the type that is numerical, verifiable, and immutable. At this stage, we will take a closer look at the whitepaper, uncover the tech stack and consensus mechanisms deployed, understand how validators nodes or mining algorithms operate for the project, and analyze the blockchain layer architecture, node types, etc.<\/p>\n
Once we have a good understanding of the project from a functionality and technical perspective, it is time to look at on-chain metrics and developer information such as Github commits, developer activity, TVL, usage metrics, traffic volume, fees & revenue, governance, etc.<\/p>\n
Here are some of the tools we use to conduct our research:<\/p>\n
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Research Tools:<\/strong><\/h3>\n<\/span><\/p>\n
\n- <\/i> DeFiLlama<\/span><\/li>\n
- <\/i> Token Terminal<\/span><\/li>\n
- <\/i> DeFi Pulse<\/li>\n
- <\/i> Glassnode<\/span><\/li>\n
- <\/i> Chainalysis<\/li>\n
- <\/i> Santiment<\/li>\n
- <\/i> Github<\/li>\n
- <\/i> Whitepapers<\/li>\n
- <\/i> Messari<\/li>\n
- <\/i> Nomics<\/li>\n
- <\/i> CoinGecko<\/li>\n
- <\/i> DappRadar<\/li>\n
- <\/i> Blockchain Center<\/li>\n
- <\/i> Nansen<\/li>\n
- <\/i> MIT Digital Currency Initiative<\/li>\n
- <\/i> University of Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
<\/div><\/div><\/div> <\/span><\/p>\n
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\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n- <\/i> Dune Analytics<\/span><\/li>\n
- <\/i> Arkham Intelligence<\/span><\/li>\n
- <\/i> Reddit, Telegram, Crypto Twitter<\/li>\n
- <\/i> LookIntoBitcoin<\/li>\n
- <\/i> Coin Checkup<\/li>\n
- <\/i> Seeking Alpha<\/li>\n
- <\/i> Crypto.com Research<\/li>\n
- <\/i> IntoTheBlock<\/li>\n
- <\/i> Woobull Charts\/TradingView<\/li>\n
- <\/i> CryptoQuant<\/li>\n
- <\/i> Stack.money<\/li>\n
- <\/i> CoinGoLive<\/li>\n
- <\/i> Augmento<\/li>\n
- <\/i> Blockchain Research Institute<\/li>\n
- <\/i> Blockchain Association<\/li>\n
- <\/i> Chamber of Digital Commerce<\/li>\n
- <\/i> Various AI research tools<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/span><\/p>\nStep 5. Security Check & Compliance<\/h3>\n
Ensuring the security of cryptocurrency platforms, networks, DApps, and protocols is a key part of our review process. We conduct comprehensive assessments of each platform\u2019s compliance with financial regulations, as well as any emerging government policies that could impact its operations or value. If potential regulatory issues arise, we inform our readers so they can make informed decisions. We also disclose any significant past regulatory challenges the platform may have faced.<\/p>\n
As the crypto industry is still largely unregulated, we are not here to take a side regarding controversial topics such as whether or not DeFi protocols should or should not be regulated, we simply do our best to inform our readers of the current legal and regulatory landscape and standings so the reader can make their own decisions.<\/p>\n
Our security evaluations cover critical elements like wallet protection, private key management, encryption methods, audits conducted, security features, and transaction security. We analyze these measures to ensure the platform is well-protected against hacks and fraudulent activity. Additionally, we conduct a thorough background check on any past security breaches, examining their severity and the steps taken to prevent future incidents.<\/p>\n
To ensure our team is well versed in crypto security best practices and perform due diligence to the highest standards, our team members have collaborated with and consult the findings of top blockchain security agencies.<\/p>\n
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Collaborated With<\/strong><\/h3>\n