Santiment’s ranking of development activity in the privacy sector has Cointelegraph’s headline saying “DASH, LINK, and HOPR lead the pack.” But if you really understand the chart, the conclusion is exactly the opposite: the market simply doesn’t price privacy coins based on GitHub.
Let’s look at the numbers (all from Santiment’s screenshot). DASH has 680 in 30-day development activity and a market cap of $525 million. ZEC has 27 and a market cap of $16 billion. XMR has 26 and a market cap of $10 billion. ZEC’s market cap is about 30 times DASH’s, while its development activity is only 1/25 of DASH’s.
It gets even more absurd further down the list. HOPR has 170 in activity and a market cap of $3.52 million—more than six times ZEC’s activity, yet its market cap is only about 1/4,500 of ZEC’s.
So using this ranking to pick coins is basically like using a contrarian indicator. The reason isn’t mysterious:
This metric counts “notable” events in the GitHub repositories tracked by Santiment. It measures the number of actions, not code quality, and certainly not whether anyone uses the project. How repositories are split up and whether commits are made in small increments or bundled into larger ones can directly affect the score. Outsiders also can’t tell whether the core developers are working in the repositories it tracks.
LINK appearing on a “privacy” ranking makes the problem even clearer: in the screenshot, it’s listed under 19 market categories, and privacy is just one of those tags. Comparing the commit count of a general-purpose oracle with Monero’s doesn’t mean much.
Why are ZEC and XMR valuable? Liquidity, exchange listings, narratives, and regulatory maneuvering—these have little to do with this month’s commit count. Conversely, DASH’s activity is 25 times ZEC’s, yet its market cap is still only one-thirtieth of ZEC’s.
Development activity has a very limited use: if a project suddenly drops to zero, it may mean nobody is working on it, which is a useful signal. But treating it as evidence that something is “undervalued” means you’ve been fooled by a spreadsheet.
#ZEC #DASH
Let’s look at the numbers (all from Santiment’s screenshot). DASH has 680 in 30-day development activity and a market cap of $525 million. ZEC has 27 and a market cap of $16 billion. XMR has 26 and a market cap of $10 billion. ZEC’s market cap is about 30 times DASH’s, while its development activity is only 1/25 of DASH’s.
It gets even more absurd further down the list. HOPR has 170 in activity and a market cap of $3.52 million—more than six times ZEC’s activity, yet its market cap is only about 1/4,500 of ZEC’s.
So using this ranking to pick coins is basically like using a contrarian indicator. The reason isn’t mysterious:
This metric counts “notable” events in the GitHub repositories tracked by Santiment. It measures the number of actions, not code quality, and certainly not whether anyone uses the project. How repositories are split up and whether commits are made in small increments or bundled into larger ones can directly affect the score. Outsiders also can’t tell whether the core developers are working in the repositories it tracks.
LINK appearing on a “privacy” ranking makes the problem even clearer: in the screenshot, it’s listed under 19 market categories, and privacy is just one of those tags. Comparing the commit count of a general-purpose oracle with Monero’s doesn’t mean much.
Why are ZEC and XMR valuable? Liquidity, exchange listings, narratives, and regulatory maneuvering—these have little to do with this month’s commit count. Conversely, DASH’s activity is 25 times ZEC’s, yet its market cap is still only one-thirtieth of ZEC’s.
Development activity has a very limited use: if a project suddenly drops to zero, it may mean nobody is working on it, which is a useful signal. But treating it as evidence that something is “undervalued” means you’ve been fooled by a spreadsheet.
#ZEC #DASH
