DeFi Pulse has become the go-to stats provider for the industry, so being left off the list could be detrimental for a project. The 1inch exchange is finding this out the hard way.
Just like CoinMarketCap (CMC) in 2017/18, DeFi Pulse has become the standard for metrics and protocol performance for the fledgling financial sector.
CMC was bought out by Binance and its integrity became questionable, often being accused of inflating exchange volumes. Now, DeFi Pulse is refusing to list 1inch exchange — but there is more to it than meets the eye.
1inch, which launched an airdrop in December 2020, has requested a listing on DeFiPulse several times. Its latest request on Feb. 9 has also been denied.
Feuding DeFi Founders
The spat goes back to 2019 when 1inch founder, Sergei Kunz, alleged that DeFi Pulse stole its code to build a competing project. DeFi Pulse founder Scott Lewis denied the allegations but the feud escalated epitomizing the state of crypto tribalism that detracts from what the industry is really trying to achieve.
There were denial-of-service attacks and even threats of violence between the two founders. Currently, DeFi Pulse refuses to deal with Kunz but said it would cooperate with the 1inch community.
It seems that DeFi Prime has also joined forces with Lewis in refusing to list 1inch;
DeFiPrime responded;
“Everyone already knows about 1inch, and all trading volume in the world lives on 1inch’s 300 servers. There is no point to promote market leaders.”
Industry analyst Chris Blec stated that the industry “needs to rid itself of toxic cancel-culture bulls**t.”
In light of the development a number of leading crypto publications have boycotted DeFi Pulse in favor of competing providers such as DeFi Llama and DappRadar which has also pledged its support for 1inch and DeFi transparency;
If DeFi Pulse is selective over its listings, then the TVL figure it reports ($40 billion at the time of press) for the entire industry can also be construed as misleading.
Also missing from its DeFi listings is the Binance Smart Chain DEX PancakeSwap and NEO’s DeFi platform Flamingo Finance.
1inch TVL Update
Naturally, TVL reported across platforms will differ depending on their listings. DeFi Llama reports a total of $57 billion for the industry with 85 protocols listed (compared to DeFi Pulse’s 67). DappRadar meanwhile reports an industry TVL of $39 billion with just 22 listings.
Both of these platforms, however, are reporting similar 1inch TVL figures at $2.2 billion. Its native 1INCH token is also doing pretty well, up 8% since the weekly open, trading at $5.32 at the time of press. This is just slightly off its Feb. 6 ATH of $5.83 according to CoinGecko.