Founders and VCs Still Control Whale Accounts For These Leading DeFi Projects

Thor Hartvigsen, a DeFi researcher, just discovered new information that shows how much power whales may have over some of the largest crypto projects.The scientists published data on February 28 after identifying the top whales using eight “strong performance methods.”

Additionally, the results are startling but not altogether unexpected considering the way in which crypto project fundraising operates. The bulk of startups are supported by venture capital, and these giants still have large bags of tokens on hand.

As Lido, a liquid staking platform, has shown impressive growth over the previous year, it was chosen as the first project to be examined. While a staggering 10% of the LDO supply is in the ownership of venture capital companies Paradigm Capital and Dragonfly Capital.

This is equivalent to about 100 million tokens, which are now valued at $309 million according to LDO pricing. The researcher said that “Dragonfly unlocks 10 million extra LDO tokens on August 25, 2023, while Paradigm’s 100 million LDO vesting cycle concludes in May 2023.”

The decentralized perpetual exchange GMX is heavily influenced by whales. Only four whale accounts control almost 7% of the total quantity in circulation, with Arthur Hayes, the top whale, holding 200,500 GMX tokens worth $15 million.

Several of the VC investors who have previously invested in Frax Finance still have FXS tokens in their whale wallets. Just five whale accounts own a staggering 15% of the FXS circulating supply, according Hartvigsen’s research.

Curve is another site with whale influence that offers DeFi stablecoin yield. The study determined that a few founder wallets together have close to 400 million CRV coins. The 752 million CRV tokens that are now in circulation are locked for vesting for the next two years.

Also heavily dominated by whales are dYdX, Synthetix (SNX), and Polygon (MATIC). 8% of the total supply of MATIC is held by five VC whale accounts.