Token Market Dilution And Weak Average Outcomes

Issue 83 Edition 2026-03-24 8 min read

General

Sources: 1 • Confidence: Medium • Updated: 2026-03-25 17:52

Key takeaways

Positive institutional and infrastructure trends in crypto have not been matched by commensurate token performance.
In 2025, the historical relationship between on-chain revenue growth and token price performance broke, with revenue reaching records while token prices did not move.
Blockworks IR launched at the Digital Asset Summit in New York and onboarded BNB and JITO as inaugural clients.
Blockworks launched a product called Blockworks Investor Relations (Blockworks IR) aimed at helping on-chain businesses present standardized, transparent, data-driven investor information with less overhead.
In the United States, the number of public companies fell by roughly half over the last 20 years while the cost of being public rose about fourfold, including about $2.2 million per year in auditing and compliance costs.

Positive institutional and infrastructure trends in crypto have not been matched by commensurate token performance.
Over the last four years, the number of tokens in existence increased by about 35 million while overall crypto market cap was roughly flat.
Average market cap per token is down about 50% versus 2021 after adjusting for the growth in token count.
After adjusting for token supply inflation, the average token price is down about 80%.
Since 2022, token cohorts have broadly declined on market cap, average price, and median price, with Bitcoin described as the cohort that is working.

In 2025, the historical relationship between on-chain revenue growth and token price performance broke, with revenue reaching records while token prices did not move.
Investor distrust in tokens is attributed to market issues (too many assets, fragmented liquidity, low issuance barriers) and information issues (missing/incomplete data, lack of disclosures, non-standardized reporting).
Poor information transparency contributes to bad market structure, and greater transparency would have reduced harmful industry behaviors and 'own goals' over the last four years.
On-chain protocols can deliver better-than-traditional investor relations because most protocols have a majority of operating and financial history transparently available live on-chain.
Standardized and regularly available investor information is presented as existential table stakes for tokens because investors will not continue operating without it.

Blockworks IR launched at the Digital Asset Summit in New York and onboarded BNB and JITO as inaugural clients.
Blockworks IR aims to provide engagement analytics and investor-level insights by linking investor identity and on-chain exposure/behavior to target outreach.
Blockworks plans to release a 'BlockWorks agent' that compresses Blockworks research, data, and market understanding into an assistant intended to replace or reduce expensive external IR services.
Vlad Tenev said he was bored listening to his own company's investor presentation, implying current IR formats can be unengaging.
Within about two years, protocols and exchanges will adopt proactive, event-driven, socially distributed IR models rather than relying on traditional quarterly reporting formats.

Blockworks launched a product called Blockworks Investor Relations (Blockworks IR) aimed at helping on-chain businesses present standardized, transparent, data-driven investor information with less overhead.
Token investors lack a default standardized investor-facing source of truth comparable to public-equity IR norms (quarterly cadence, standardized reporting, guidance, centralized materials).
Blockworks IR is described as a three-part stack: standardized data publication, IR services (e.g., quarterly reports and investor calls), and an end-to-end workflow platform.
Blockworks IR is positioned as a branded centralized investor-relations portal analogous to a public company's IR webpage where materials and data live in one standard place.

In the United States, the number of public companies fell by roughly half over the last 20 years while the cost of being public rose about fourfold, including about $2.2 million per year in auditing and compliance costs.
On-chain protocols can deliver better-than-traditional investor relations because most protocols have a majority of operating and financial history transparently available live on-chain.

What is the pricing model and unit economics for Blockworks IR (platform fees, service retainers, tiering), and what operational overhead does it truly remove for protocols?
How many clients has Blockworks IR signed beyond the inaugural BNB and JITO, and what is the retention/usage pattern of the investor portal and reporting cadence?
What specific datasets, definitions, and sources support the claims about token count growth, flat market cap, and the derived 50%/80% average declines?
Does the correlation between on-chain revenue measures and token returns actually change in 2025, and does the result hold across sectors and token cohorts?
Which disclosure elements (e.g., standardized KPIs, risk disclosures, treasury policies) are hypothesized to most reduce distrust, and what evidence links specific disclosure improvements to improved liquidity or valuation outcomes?

If token performance is being constrained by dilution and fragmented liquidity, then sector level fundamentals like on-chain revenue may be a weaker short to mid term explanatory factor for token returns than supply dynamics and market structure.
If disclosure quality and standardized investor communication are gating trust, then protocols that improve recurring, consistent investor facing reporting could see relatively better liquidity and valuation stability versus peers even without faster revenue growth.
If Blockworks IR removes meaningful overhead and becomes a default investor portal, it could benefit from adoption tied to broader IR standardization needs across on-chain businesses, especially as traditional public company compliance is costly.

Independent datasets support token count growth alongside flat aggregate market cap and show average per token metrics deteriorating, with results robust across cohorts and excluding outliers.
Replication shows the 2025 break between on-chain revenue and token returns holds across sectors and token cohorts, not just a narrow subset, and persists after controlling for supply changes.
Blockworks IR discloses pricing and unit economics and shows client growth beyond BNB and JITO, with recurring usage patterns such as regular reporting cadence and repeated investor portal engagement.

Better sourced data shows dilution and average outcome claims are overstated or sensitive to definitions, and average token performance is explained mainly by a few sector drawdowns rather than broad fragmentation.
Evidence shows the revenue to price linkage did not materially change in 2025 once cohort selection, supply, and token incentive emissions are accounted for.
Blockworks IR fails to add clients beyond initial launches, usage is sporadic, or protocols report that the product does not reduce operational overhead or does not improve perceived disclosure quality.