Unless you're extremely new to crypto, you probably remember the days of hearing of a new project and trotting over to CoinMarketCap (CMC) to check out the details. Then came a small time competitor, CoinGecko, to change that narrative. According to a Dec, 2020 news article by The Ken CoinGecko had closed the gap with CMC to just within 9 million unique website visits per month in October of 2020, a large difference from the nearly 24 million visitor gap that was there in May of 2020. And they had done so not by simply mimicking CMC itself, they did so by innovating, being more nimble and progressing their data/technology. Reports were even as recently as February of 2021 CMC was still running off Google Sheets for their pricing data (yuck!).
David vs. Goliath
Today a similar version of this David vs. Goliath narrative is happening, but the arena has changed to DeFi Rankings and Analysis. DeFi Pulse has been the leader of this field for quite some time providing useful tools like Total Value Locked (TVL), what each project is, key stats and whether they've been audited (if you're a newbie to DeFi this is one of the most important parts!). All of this has been helpful but the longer I've been involved in DeFi the more I've begun to notice the same issues that had begun to happen to CMC last year. TVL #'s that seemed...Just a little off, audits that appeared on the website of some DeFi projects with valid links that didn't appear on DeFi Pulse.
That's when, while chilling in the Harvest.Finance discord, I first heard of DeFi Llama. One of the community leader's for Harvest.Finance gave it a glowing review and mentioned how they are a lot more accurate and nimble than DeFi Pulse. That's when I remembered the CMC vs CoinGecko battle from last year. This seemed to be just another situation of a company maybe getting a little too comfortable on their perch atop their field.
Before getting too ahead of myself though I decided to give DeFi Llama a good look, and wow, it's got quite a few better tools than it's competitors. Not only did they offer an option for night mode (I pity the fool that doesn't use night mode) but they also had more accurate info than I had seen before. They also, unlike DeFi Pulse, actually did a good job of tracking DeFi protocols that weren't just Ethereum (ETH). They also track Insurance, Yield Farming, Options, Indexes and more on their site.
Final Thoughts
So whether you're a DeFi Newbie or a Chad DeFi Farmer™ looking for your next farm to reap 3000x returns on, DeFi Llama might be a great tool to add to your kit. From everything I've seen they provide some of the most accurate, up-to-date information on DeFi projects out there and seem to be committed to transparency and functionality. But with all that being said they are a fairly new project and anything can happen, I can write this article today and tomorrow they could drop everything and run. As with anything in crypto DYOR (Do Your Own Research) and good luck making some money out there.
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