The American business magazine Fortune has compiled the inaugural Crypto 40 ranking of the 40 best cryptocurrency companies across eight categories.
Congratulations to the Fortune Crypto 40 winners — a list of the best companies in crypto based on data and reputation in eight categories.
The list is the first of its kind and recognizes crypto firms (and DAOs) built to last .https://t.co/e8WTwcZY9Y
— Jeff Roberts (@jeffjohnroberts) April 10, 2023
“Although the crypto industry is going through the toughest period in its history, the names on this list were striving to build firms designed to endure for decades,” the publication noted.
The decision to divide the ranking into eight categories reflects the fact that this is a highly diversified industry, for which it is difficult to establish universal criteria, the journalists noted.
Fortune did not disclose the full methodology for competitive reasons. Preference was given to long-established firms, their scale and business success.
In the CeFi category, Coinbase topped the list, with Binance in second place—the only non-American firm among the top five.
In this section, the main criteria of success were market share, transparency and industry reputation. Preference was given to exchanges, stablecoin issuers and custodians.
Among participants from traditional finance (TradFi), the ranking’s winner was the payments company PayPal. In the top five, experts also included the banking and investment giants JPMorgan Chase and Fidelity.
In this category, the participants were traditional financial institutions that “have achieved significant success in the world of crypto and blockchain.” The criteria included the number of products and investments related to digital assets.
In the NFT sector, the ranking was led by the OpenSea marketplace. Behind it came Yuga Labs, the studio behind the popular Bored Ape Yacht Club collection. Experts mainly considered trading volume and fees where applicable.
In the category of infrastructure projects, mining companies, hardware makers and software developers were included. To make the list, firms had to possess a market capitalization of at least $400 million or raise a similar amount.
The winner in the category was the French hardware-wallet provider Ledger. In second place was the European mining entity Genesis Digital Assets, ahead of the world’s largest manufacturer of mining devices, Bitmain.
Venture-capital firms were required to finance at least 35 projects in the industry, with at least one unicorn among them. The leading trio consisted of Polychain Capital, Animoca Brands and Andreessen Horowitz.
In DeFi, Uniswap was the winner, beating Lido and MakerDAO. Among the requirements for participants were a mandatory code audit of the protocol, governance through DAO, TVL of at least $200 million and monthly revenue above $100,000. A project-connected legal entity was also required.
In the data and blockchain-analytics category, the list was led by Chainalysis. Behind it came Coin Metrics and The Graph. Primary criteria included the amount of financing raised, staff size and media reputation.
Experts noted that in the category of protocols decentralization had to be considered, since many crypto projects, including Bitcoin, are not governed by a single organisation. The publication evaluated labs, funds, companies and other entities behind blockchain. Key metrics included network-related revenue, volumes and activity, as well as security.
Ultimately digital gold yielded to Ethereum. The top five also included two layer-2 solutions to scale Ethereum — Polygon and Arbitrum.
In 2022, Cardano overtook Bitcoin in MBLM’s consumer-emotional-attachment ranking. The 600-strong list also included Uniswap and Solana.