Protos took a close look at Poloniex’s last 100 listings and found that almost every single one of those tokens were memecoins.
We analyzed the latest 100 listings, from August 23 to October 29. Of these 100 tokens, 94 were memecoins; the remainder were tokenized assets, restaking, AI, and utility tokens.
Poloniex publicly claims that its “primary objective is to provide users worldwide with access to the finest crypto assets available.”
Well, the “finest” seemingly include such prominent examples as: slop, Fartcoin, Goatseus Maximus, PUSS, and Harambe.
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There are also quite a few tokens that seem to represent intellectual property and likenesses that the teams do not actually control. Examples of this type of token include: Elmo, Wukong (the description for the coin makes clear its a reference to Black Myth: Wukong), Caprisun, and Changpeng Zhao.
The descriptions for many of these tokens often just say ‘meme token,’ but when more details are provided, they often seem suspect. Elmo claims explicitly that it “is the legendary character from the classic TV Show ‘Elmo’s World’” and even goes further to say that “Elmo left behind his old world and arrived in TRON. He has become the red mascot of the red chain, TRON.”
As far as Protos has been able to confirm, there’s no agreement between TRON and the holders of the Elmo intellectual property, something Poloniex’s owner, TRON founder Justin Sun, should understand.
Poloniex has a long history of listing assets that other exchanges have avoided, and the current memecoin frenzy seems to have provided a way to further lower its standards.
Protos reached out to Poloniex’s listing team to glean any information about its listing process, but so far have not received a response.