The standards.What the badge means.
How G.MARKETS decides which projects receive a verification badge — what we confirm, what we don’t endorse, and how to apply. Published in advance. Applied equally.
An editorial reference, not a trading venue.
G.MARKETS does not custody assets, process transactions, or profit from price action on any verified coin. The only relationship between G.MARKETS and a verified project is the review fee paid at the time of approval.
The separation is deliberate. Curation only has value when it is independent from the asset’s performance. Curators who profit from a coin going up have an incentive to verify too freely. We don’t have that incentive.
Curation also means rejection. Not every project that applies is approved. Rejected projects receive a clear reason and may reapply free after addressing the issues raised. The full record of approvals and revocations is on the public log.
Why some projects are verified without applying.
The founding verified set is selected editorially by objective criteria — market capitalization, exchange coverage, multi-year track record, verifiable team, no fraud signals. Those projects didn’t apply and didn’t pay. They are verified because they meet the standard at scale and any reasonable curator would include them.
The verification fee is for projects that want to apply for review and receive the associated marketing benefits — the announcement on @thegmarkets, the published comparison card, the embeddable badge, and the spotlight placements depending on tier. It covers review time and editorial maintenance.
The fee does not purchase verification. Applications can be rejected, and no payment is taken on rejection. Projects pay only after approval.
The three states.
Enhanced is a paid listing. Verified is a notary mark. Featured is editorial.
Project-submitted page treatment, no badge. Available from day 1 — no eligibility requirement. The page shows a “Submitted · Verification Pending” pill while the project works toward the badge threshold.
The project’s identity, listing, and metadata have been reviewed against external sources. Gold checkmark badge displayed across every G.MARKETS surface. Requires eligibility — 30+ days trading plus $1M+ mcap with multi-exchange liquidity, or a qualifying DEX pool. See methodology.
Editorial tier for hand-selected projects with notable traction, product depth, or sector relevance. Orange star badge. All Featured projects are also Verified.
What we confirm.
Before issuing a Verified badge, each of the following is checked.
- 01
Project identity
The applicant controls the official communication channels — domain, X handle, GitHub, or equivalent.
- 02
Listing legitimacy
An active listing on a reputable market data source with consistent metadata across our platform.
- 03
Active status
Ongoing activity at the time of review — measurable trading volume, on-chain activity, or visible development.
- 04
Trading-history & liquidity threshold
30+ days of measurable trading activity, AND at least one of: $1M+ market cap with active trading on two or more reputable exchanges, or a verifiable on-chain DEX pool with 30-day average liquidity of $250K or more.
Volume is reviewed as a quality signal — not used as a sole gate. Wash trading makes any volume number unreliable on its own.
Meeting these thresholds permits an application — it does not guarantee approval. A token that pumps to $10M with no team transparency, no audit, or signs of wash trading will not be verified. Brand-new tokens may apply for an Enhanced Listing ($299) on day 1.
Thresholds are reviewed annually to reflect market conditions. Current bar set May 2026.
- 05
Working surfaces
A reachable website, a public contact path, and a verifiable team presence — doxxed founder, registered entity, or established pseudonym with track record.
- 06
No active rug or fraud signals
The project has not been flagged by major exchanges, regulators, or independent on-chain analysis for behavior consistent with rug pulls, honeypots, or coordinated scam patterns.
What verification does not imply.
The badge is an identity and metadata confirmation. It is not any of the following.
- NOT
Financial advice
The badge is not investment advice, a recommendation to buy/sell/hold, or any prediction about future price.
- NOT
An endorsement of long-term viability
Verification reflects the project’s state at the time of review and is subject to revocation if circumstances change.
- NOT
A security audit
G.MARKETS does not audit smart contracts, tokenomics, or security claims. Independent audits remain the responsibility of the project and the user.
- NOT
A guarantee against loss
Crypto assets are inherently volatile. Verified projects can and do lose value.
- NOT
Permanent
Verification is a 12-month term and is re-attested annually against these criteria. It may also be revoked mid-term if a project becomes inactive, abandoned, or is flagged for behavior inconsistent with the criteria above.
How Featured is awarded.
Editorial designation, not a paid tier alone. Reviewed quarterly.
- Sustained market cap and trading volume above sector medians
- Product depth — working application, active user base, measurable on-chain usage
- Sector relevance — meaningful position within a tracked category (Layer 1, DeFi, AI, etc.)
- Editorial fit with G.MARKETS’ coverage focus
Featured status is reviewed quarterly. Falling out of Featured does not remove the underlying Verified status.
What gets an application declined.
Verification fails the same way it succeeds — against published, categorized criteria. When an application is declined, the public log entry references the specific category below.
- §1
Team identity unverifiable
No publicly identifiable founders, anonymous-only with no track record, or contradictory identity claims across surfaces. Anonymity by itself is not disqualifying — unverifiability is.
- §2
Supply concentration without disclosure
Top 10 wallets hold ≥80% of supply without published lock-up, vesting, or multisig disclosure. Concentration is fine if it’s declared and structured.
- §3
Contract risk signals
Honeypot detected, hidden owner functions, self-destruct enabled, sell-tax exceeds 10%, or ownership not renounced where the project claims it is. Cross-referenced via GoPlus and Honeypot.is.
- §4
Inactivity
No on-chain activity, no team communications, no commits, and no liquidity change for 90+ days. Dead projects don’t get verified — even paying ones.
- §5
Undisclosed paid promotion
KOL, influencer, or exchange deals not declared at application. Discovery via third-party reporting post-approval is grounds for revocation.
- §6
Contradicted prior public statements
Rugpull post-mortems, broken roadmap commitments, or material contradictions between team statements and on-chain reality.
- §7
Active regulatory action
Open SEC, CFTC, or equivalent foreign-regulator action against the team, project, or material parts of the supply.
- §8
Insufficient market presence
24h volume and aggregate liquidity below the threshold at which the verified badge would convey misleading legitimacy. Specifically: aggregate liquidity <$50K or 24h volume <$10K across all surfaced pools.
- §9
Fabricated claims
Falsified audit reports, fake partnership announcements, unverifiable team credentials, or misattributed advisors.
- §10
Failed re-attestation
Existing verified projects that lapse at the 12-month re-attestation: failure to respond, material changes that would not have passed initial review, or criteria drift detected in continuous monitoring.
Reapplication. Denied applicants may reapply free after the underlying issue is addressed. There is no payment-for-reversal — every reapplication is reviewed against the same criteria. We publish a denial only after the applicant has been informed and given the reasoning in writing.
Application process.
- 01
Apply
Submit via /get-listed or email listing@gokhshtein.com. Applications are free. No payment is taken at this stage.
- 02
Review
G.MARKETS reviews against the criteria above. Most reviews complete within 24–72 hours.
- 03
Approve
If criteria are met, the applicant receives an approval email and a payment link. If rejected, the applicant receives a clear reason and may reapply free after addressing the issues. No money is taken on rejection.
- 04
Pay
Payment is collected only after approval. Once received, the project moves to the publish step. Refunds available within 7 days if the project hasn’t yet been publicly listed.
- 05
Launch
The badge appears across G.MARKETS within ~60 seconds. The approval is appended to the public log with reasoning. Future revocations are logged the same way.
How the G Score is built.
A 0–100 quantitative grade rendered on every coin page. Distinct from verification — verification is a notary mark; the G Score is a data-driven snapshot.
The G Score is a composite rating across five factors. Default weights: Market Position (20%), Momentum (25%), Liquidity (20%), Community & Development (20%), Risk Profile (15%). Each factor is scored independently from publicly available CoinGecko data and assigned a letter grade (A+ to F). The overall score is a weighted average.
Sector-aware adjustments. Comparing a stablecoin’s momentum to a memecoin’s makes no sense — a stablecoin should have near-zero movement (peg stability), while memecoins live on momentum. So weights are tuned per sector:
- Stablecoins — Liquidity 40%, Market Position 30%, Risk 20%, Momentum 5%, Community 5%. Momentum scoring inverted: stable = good, drift = bad.
- Memecoins — Momentum 30%, Liquidity 30%, Market Position 25%, Community 10%, Risk 5%.
- Layer 1 / Layer 2 — Community & Dev 30%, with momentum and market position rounding out.
- DeFi — Liquidity 30%, Community 25%, Market Position 20%.
- AI tokens — Momentum 30%, Community 25%, Market Position 20%.
- Unclassified — Default weights apply.
Disclosure. Factor weights and threshold cutoffs were initially derived from quantitative analysis and reviewed by the G.MARKETS team. The methodology is maintained editorially — weights and thresholds may be adjusted over time as market structure evolves. Adjustments will be disclosed here with the date of change.
Negative signal layer. The data-driven score can’t see what happened to a project last year. So an editorial registry of documented events — major hacks, regulatory enforcement actions, audit failures, insider sell waves, depeg events, project collapses — applies a hard ceiling on the overall grade.
- Severe (terminal events) — max 40/100 (C-)
- Major (SEC enforcement, >$50M hack) — max 60/100 (B-)
- Moderate (formal warning, sub-$50M exploit) — max 73/100 (B+)
- Minor (failed audit, minor security issue) — max 80/100 (A-)
Each applied cap is shown on the coin’s G Score panel with a link to the source. The unconstrained model score is also displayed for transparency.
30-day trend & sector percentile. A daily cron snapshots the score for the top 100 coins; per-coin history powers the “30D delta” line, and a per-sector sorted score list powers the percentile rank (“top 12% of layer 1 protocols”).
What it is. A quantitative snapshot of where a token stands today across five dimensions of public market data, with documented editorial flags applied where relevant.
What it is not. A prediction. A recommendation. An audit. The underlying inputs (volume, market cap, community signals) can be manipulated; the G Score reflects what the public data shows, not what is true.
How the Top Voices board is scored.
PULSE ranks crypto’s voices by genuine influence — and is built so the ranking can’t simply be bought. See the live board →
- 01
Reach
A square-root–damped function of follower count, so a massive following lifts a voice without dominating the board. Reach is discounted when a voice’s engagement rate is implausibly low for its follower count — the signature of bought or ghost followers.
- 02
Engagement
Likes and reposts on a voice’s recent posts — the core, live signal of who the market is actually listening to. Engagement is capped at a generous multiple of reach, so farmed engagement on a small account can’t buy a top rank, while genuine virality still counts in full.
- 03
Activity
A modest bonus for being active in the current window — capped, so sheer posting volume (spam) can’t climb the board.
Keeping it honest. The three usual ways to game an influence score are buying followers, farming engagement, and spam-posting. Each is structurally limited above — followers are damped and authenticity-checked, engagement is capped relative to real reach, and activity is bounded. A legitimate voice with healthy engagement is unaffected; a gamed account is de-ranked.
What it is. A live snapshot of crypto’s loudest voices over a recent window, refreshed continuously. The board moves as the conversation does, and a voice’s rank and follower history are charted on their profile.
What it is not. An endorsement, a recommendation, or a measure of who is right. PULSE reflects attention and reach from public social data — not accuracy. Public signals can be manipulated; PULSE caps the obvious vectors but cannot certify authenticity.
Market data — prices, volumes, market capitalizations, and historical series — is provided by CoinGecko, with on-chain DEX data from GeckoTerminal. G.MARKETS is an informational tool. Nothing on this site constitutes financial, investment, legal, or tax advice. Always do your own research and consider your own financial situation before making any decision related to crypto assets.