Token Underperformance Framed As Dilution Plus Trust/Information Failures

Issue 83 Edition 2026-03-24 7 min read

General

Sources: 1 • Confidence: Medium • Updated: 2026-03-25 17:50

Key takeaways

Over the last four years, the number of tokens increased by roughly 35 million while overall crypto market cap was described as basically flat.
Blockworks IR combines curated analytics, branded investor portals, and white-glove advisory support into a single platform for onchain businesses.
Token issuer IR is predicted to shift toward proactive, engaging, social and in-person experiences, with broad adoption of this style within about two years.
The number of U.S. public companies is claimed to have fallen to about half over the last ~20 years while the cost of being public is claimed to have risen to about four times prior levels, including about $2.2 million per year in auditing and compliance costs.
In 2025, the historical linkage between onchain revenue growth and token price performance is claimed to have broken, with record onchain revenue not translating into token price gains.

Over the last four years, the number of tokens increased by roughly 35 million while overall crypto market cap was described as basically flat.
After adjusting for growth in the number of tokens, the average token market cap is described as down about 50% versus 2021 levels.
After accounting for token supply inflation, the average token price is described as down about 80%.
A core driver of token underperformance is described as a trust problem caused by market-structure issues and information issues.
Investors in crypto are described as often lacking regular disclosures, complete data, and standardized reporting.
Poor information and lack of transparency are described as actively contributing to bad market structure and repeated investor mistakes in crypto.

Blockworks IR combines curated analytics, branded investor portals, and white-glove advisory support into a single platform for onchain businesses.
Blockworks launched Blockworks IR at the Digital Asset Summit in New York.
BNB and JITO were inaugural clients for Blockworks IR at launch.
Blockworks IR is presented as a three-part stack: standardized data publication, IR services (including quarterly reports and investor calls), and an end-to-end workflow platform.
The Blockworks IR platform is described as a branded, standardized investor-relations website for protocols where investor materials and data are centralized in one place, analogous to public-company IR pages.

Token issuer IR is predicted to shift toward proactive, engaging, social and in-person experiences, with broad adoption of this style within about two years.
Blockworks plans a forthcoming 'Blockworks agent' intended to compress data, research, and market understanding into a lower-cost alternative to traditional external IR services firms.

The number of U.S. public companies is claimed to have fallen to about half over the last ~20 years while the cost of being public is claimed to have risen to about four times prior levels, including about $2.2 million per year in auditing and compliance costs.
Crypto is argued to be able to build a better IR model than TradFi because protocols have a large share of operating and financial history available live and transparently onchain, enabling real-time storytelling at lower overhead.

In 2025, the historical linkage between onchain revenue growth and token price performance is claimed to have broken, with record onchain revenue not translating into token price gains.

Token issuer IR is predicted to shift toward proactive, engaging, social and in-person experiences, with broad adoption of this style within about two years.

What is the pricing model for Blockworks IR (subscription tiers, services retainers, add-ons), and what cost/effort does it replace for protocols?
Which specific metrics and schemas are included in the 'standardized data publication' component, and what cadence is expected (real-time vs periodic)?
Do investors actually use branded IR portals as a primary source of truth, and does that usage reduce diligence effort or change capital allocation behavior?
How accurate and reliable are the platform's inferences about investor onchain exposures and holding behavior, and what are the known failure modes?
Is the claimed 2025 break between onchain revenue growth and token price performance observable across multiple sectors after controlling for token supply inflation and token universe composition?

Crypto token underperformance may be driven more by dilution and weak disclosure standards than by protocol activity, increasing the value of standardized IR workflows and analytics for issuers and investors.
A shift toward proactive, social, in-person token issuer IR could become a new competitive axis, potentially advantaging teams that can operationalize consistent disclosure and investor engagement.
If the 2025 decoupling of onchain revenue from token prices is real, investors may rely less on revenue growth heuristics and more on supply dynamics, liquidity structure, and disclosure quality.

Observable issuer adoption of standardized data publication and branded IR portals, with regular cadence and growing investor usage as a primary source of truth.
Evidence that protocols using an integrated IR platform reduce time to answer investor diligence, improve disclosure consistency, or expand investor coverage relative to prior ad hoc workflows.
Broad, repeatable analysis showing 2025 token price performance weakly related to onchain revenue after controlling for supply inflation and changes in token universe composition.

Investor engagement with issuer IR portals remains low and does not change diligence effort or capital allocation behavior, indicating limited demand for productized crypto IR.
Token performance continues to track onchain revenue growth across sectors once supply and composition effects are controlled, undermining the claimed 2025 regime change.
Standardized disclosure efforts fail to gain issuer adoption or are not comparable across protocols due to inconsistent schemas and reporting cadence.