Defillama Criticizes Misleading RWA Metrics, Calls out Figure Co-Founder Allegations

0xngmi, founder of Defillama, has called out some companies for promoting what he called fake RWA metrics, replicating database movements onto blockchains to simulate activity. The post comes as an answer to Figure, which claims that Defillama has repeatedly refused to list their volumes due to their low follower count on X.

Defillama Criticizes Figure’s Volumes, Comments on Difficulties for Assessing RWA Value

Defillama, one of the leading defi and real-world assets (RWA) volume dashboards, has commented on the difficulty and due diligence needed to account for these assets. In an X post titled “The problem in RWA Metrics,” Defillama founder 0xngmi explains that, unlike other kinds of defi initiatives, RWAs were “much more opaque,” with projects inflating their volumes with misleading activity.

0xngmi declares that, while Zksync is listed as one of the chains with the most RWA value, several projects haven’t even transferred these to different wallets, with total activity only encompassing token issuance and burns.

“This is the reason why for RWA’s we spend lots of effort in due diligence, we check everything on the chain, we verify the backing of the RWAs to make sure it’s real,” he stressed.

0xngmi explained that Figure, a blockchain home equity lending, which claims to have issued $12 billion in RWA on-chain, has low activity backing these assets. Defillama found that only $5 million in BTC and $4 million in ETH were deposited in its exchange, finding little to no onchain payments, as the majority of their loans are done in fiat.

The post responds to the claims of Figure’s co-founder, Mike Cagney, who Defillama has refused to show its volume on its dashboard due to its low follower count on X. While 0xngmi acknowledged that the follower count was mentioned as one of the red flags concerning Figure, it was not the main factor leading to it.

0xngmi alleged Figure “knew the reasons for the due diligence and then goes out, makes up this lie, and tries to get everyone to bully us into skipping our process to list them so they can pump their metrics for their IPO.”

Cagney refuted Defillama’s allegations, noting that it was a fact that their team “pushed back” on their value numbers because of low X follower numbers. “To be clear, we don’t want you to skip your diligence – we want you to do what you need to do,” he concluded.

The issue of RWA values is unlikely to be solved soon, as more companies are jumping on the crypto bandwagon to inflate metrics or claim that they are working with blockchains, as 0xngmi assessed.