Algorand Foundation Research: TVL is Unrelated to Token Price Performance, Limited Reference Value

Gate News bot news, a new study by the Algorand Foundation's tokenomics team challenges one of the most widely cited metrics in the crypto assets field—Total Value Locked (TVL). It indicates that although TVL occupies a significant position in dashboards, news headlines, and investor profiles, it is unrelated to the financial performance of tokens.

Researchers previously found that TVL was inflated. Many protocols counted the same batch of funds multiple times, distorting the perception of usage and exaggerating the legitimacy of the metric. Now, researchers have conducted a comprehensive analysis of over 300 crypto assets from 2023 to 2024 (excluding Bitcoin and stablecoins) and found no evidence that TVL can represent the performance of tokens.

The research is led by Dr. Matthew Brigida, Associate Professor of Finance at the State University of New York Polytechnic Institute and Chief Economist of the Algorand Foundation.

The research team constructed weekly portfolios, ranking tokens by TVL, holding the top 25% of tokens, and shorting the bottom 25% of tokens, to test whether a high-low TVL portfolio could generate alpha returns, but the results did not support this.

Brigida said: "TVL is usually used to predict credibility or potential upside, but our results show that it cannot serve as an investment signal. Even after adjusting for known issues such as double counting, portfolios based on TVL did not yield abnormal returns."

The study calls for analysts and developers to build alternative metrics to measure confidence in DeFi platforms, such as user-centered indicators like wallet activity or independent participants.