Uncovering the Inside Story of the Exchange: The Token Listing Process at CoinEx

In the early days before the birth of the exchange, Bitcoin could only be traded in forums such as Bitcointalk or social software. Such over-the-counter transactions came with high security risks yet at a low efficiency. It was not until the emergence of exchanges that Bitcoin could be traded in an open, transparent way.

Exchanges have been promoting digital currency transactions, discovering prices, and providing liquidity since their inception ten years ago. They are the financial intermediary required by digital currencies and at the same time provide a network-based centralized gateway for buyers and sellers as a way to facilitate asset management.

Given its role of facilitating transactions and providing liquidity, the exchange is designed to list coins, which is one of its core business activities.

To list coins or earn coins?

In the blockchain industry, the exchange is essential for everyone, through which, project developers need to improve the liquidity of project assets and attract more users, investors need to trade digital currencies, and miners also need to liquidate their assets; therefore, the exchange has always been at the top of the ecological chain of the blockchain industry due to its indispensability.

Transaction fees and project listing fees are two major sources of profit for exchanges. In the bull market of cryptocurrency, the transaction fees and listing fees contribute a huge sum of profits to the top exchanges every day. Unfortunately, driven by exchanges that blindly pursue the listing fee yet neglect the project quality, the excessive listing fee, to some extent, has shut out many high-quality projects that “are committed in research and innovation”, but attract shit coins “zealous in marketing and plagiarizing code”. The latter made a lot of money after being listed, gradually squeezing out good projects. The high listing fees leave almost all first-tier exchanges criticized in this business segment.

How are coins listed on today’s exchanges?

In 2020, the mainstream media, once disapproving the Bitcoin, has become objective and neutral in this regard; the world’s first digital currency has also been issued by a sovereign state’s central bank; the Wall Street started to set up investment funds… All of these have sent out a sign that the digital currency industry is encroaching on the mainstream world and the extensive expansion mode, irregular and arbitrary, will inevitably be replaced by their professional counterparts.

Under this circumstance, exchanges have come to realize that only by earnestly fulfilling their core functions and industry responsibilities can they promote the healthy development of themselves and the industry as a whole. Only high-quality services can cultivate user loyalty and make them the world-leading exchanges.

So, how do the current exchanges list tokens?

Investment bank-style listing: quality, not quantity, matters

Take the emerging first-tier exchange CoinEx as an example. CoinEx was established in December 2017 when negative news about token listing on the exchange went rampant. CoinEx, as its name implies, is an exchange of coins that is committed to digital currency trading services.

For many years, CoinEx always adheres to its major business of spot trading, supplemented by derivatives trading, while many of its peers have started to seek other business activities.

As the founder of CoinEx said, the ultimate value of exchanges lies in the ability to spot quality innovative projects for users, and exchanges are set up to satisfy the demands of project developers and millions of traders and investors. Without listing tokens, exchanges are meaningless at all.

According to the CoinEx team’s philosophy, token listing aims to find quality, innovative digital assets for users, instead of simply listing a certain digital currency. Exchanges should focus on quality rather than quantity. Bearing this in mind, in 2021, CoinEx will update its brand slogan to “a gathering place of innovative digital assets” as its future development strategy.

CoinEx will change its token listing strategy in all respects such as screening, research, and review. That will make CoinEx’s token listing process more complicated and rigorous than that of others.

CoinEx has a digital currency research institute. First, CoinEx Research Institute will collect project information through mainstream information channels both domestic and abroad, and then select promising, innovative and high-quality projects as candidates.

Next, the research team will investigate these candidates, with each team member responsible for several projects. The analysis is based on multiple dimensions including the investment background, team, technology, concept, degree of innovation, economic model, prospects, and risks. The projects will be rated one by one according to investigation results, and those high-scoring will be further reviewed.

CoinEx also has multiple review mechanisms. Representatives from operation, finance, marketing, technology, product, and legal departments will all participate in the project review. Only projects that pass the review will be officially launched on CoinEx.

Projects that want to be listed on CoinEx also need to go through the above process, from screening, through research to the final review. CoinEx ensures that all projects listed on CoinEx are carefully selected by its project research institute and reviewed by the listing committee. With such a dual review mechanism, no high-quality innovative project will be missed, and investment risks facing users will be minimized.

Under a set of rigorous listing rules, CoinEx boasts a good record of listing quality tokens, as all of the projects it listed prove to be excellent performers.

In December 2020, CoinEx launched a total of 14 cryptocurrencies, i.e. KUN, NEAR, WOO, COVER, HEGIC, KP3R, KAVA, GHST, GRT, LON, API3, 1INCH, IRIS, and LUNA. These include top DEX in the DeFi field, dark pools of trading, innovative stablecoins, search engines in the blockchain industry, and DeFi insurance, among other innovative projects, all of which perform well in returns on investment, innovation, and potential.

Once listed on CoinEx, these projects have been favored by exchanges in the blockchain and were later listed on other first-tier exchanges such as Binance and Huobi.

That serves as an evidence that CoinEx has outrun its peers in the blockchain industry in screening innovative projects and is capable of providing users with high-quality innovative projects.

Postscript

CoinEx mirrors the development path in the past decade. From a brand new concept to an industry much criticized, as the blockchain becomes more transparent and mature, exchanges have also taken on their role to push the industry forward by focusing operation efforts on its responsibility for users. That is a signal of the maturity of an exchange and the start of a benign competition in the industry as well.