The full story of the Figure TVL crash on Defillama. 0. Defillama clashed with Provenance. The incident began when Provenance and Figure claimed a $12 billion RWA TVL. (Since the total TVL on Defillama is around $80-120 billion, this is simply a massive amount.) However, when Defillama verified this based on actual on-chain data, the claims didn't add up. The verified on-chain data shows: - Assets used for transactions: BTC $5M, ETH $4M - Proprietary stablecoin YLDS: $20M - RWA transfers: Mostly processed by separate accounts rather than the holders' wallets. In other words, the structure was not one where users held assets and traded on-chain, but rather a form where transactions running off-chain were merely recorded on the blockchain. This occurred around the time Figure was preparing for its IPO. Defillama CEO Oxngmi accused Figure of inflating the numbers to artificially raise the stock price. I wrote a very long article on X. zkSync was criticized along with it. Roughly for similar reasons. From DefiLlama's perspective, this is the problem. - Users do not directly move assets using their own keys. - Almost no on-chain liquidity. So, DefiLlama made some adjustments after that. - Strengthened due diligence on RWA TVL overall. - Introduced a policy to remove unproductive/unverifiable assets. 1. The fallout spilled over to Plume. DefiLlama changed its TVL criteria starting in late 2025. Previously, any asset held in a contract counted as TVL, but now all liquidity without actual economic activity is being removed. Specifically, single depositor vaults, LPs without transactions, lending pools without borrowers, and unverified wrapper assets are all excluded. It seems that as DefiLlama went about this, they ended up cleaning up Plume's data as well. Upon examining Plume, it was found that a significant portion of the initial TVL was concentrated in protocols like Pell, which were determined to be vaults based on a small number of wallets with almost no actual user activity. DefiLlama classified this as unproductive liquidity and removed it in large quantities. As a result, Plume's TVL, which was $150M at the time, plummeted to the $20M range. To be extremely specific, In the Pell network esBTC vault, the wallet 0xD7a3ecd8086100C9cD3E50B33Ba3061a9f3AFFE3 <— this single wallet deposited a total of $100M. explorer.plume.org/tx/0x639ceb... ($10M) explorer.plume.org/tx/0xa29388... ($20M) explorer.plume.org/tx/0x989381... ($20M) explorer.plume.org/tx/0xa4988e... ($10M) explorer.plume.org/tx/0x120858... ($20M) explorer.plume.org/tx/0xf52b0e... ($20M) The same goes for the Pell network YBTC.B vault. 0xE8ccbb36816e5f2fB69fBe6fbd46d7e370435d84 alone deposited about $34M. explorer.plume.org/tx/0xa0ffd1... ($6.8M) explorer.plume.org/tx/0xf4fb7f... ($13.7M) explorer.plume.org/tx/0xb4a70f... ($13.7M) So, to put it another way, two wallets had put a total of $134M worth of BTC into the Pell network on Plume. For reference, the Pell Network TVL also crashed on the same day. It just plummeted vertically from over $200M to almost zero. I guess there really weren't that many people depositing into the Pell Network...? So, in the end, what I said about a month ago was half right. I still don't know if some kind of deal was exchanged between Plume/Pell and the whales doing the depositing (though I suspect it almost certainly was...), but since only two wallets were used, I'll never know half of it, and I was right half of it. Of course, the vertical drop in Plume TVL wasn't because the whales doing the depositing suddenly withdrew, but because Defillama changed the TVL calculation method. The numbers roughly match up too. It dropped from 150M to 20M, but 134M was excluded from the calculation. So, the conclusion is that, somehow, I was roughly right. It plummeted vertically from $200M to almost zero. 2. Difference in TVL Calculation Methods Between rwa.xyz and DeFiLlama RWA.xyz measures completely differently from DeFiLlama. DeFiLlama only looks at capital fully contained within DeFi protocols, whereas RWA.xyz measures the total value of real-world assets existing on the chain. In other words, assets such as tokenized government bonds, funds, and credits are all included even if they only exist in wallets. Some even combine off-chain data to calculate NAV. Therefore, since DeFiLlama is an indicator of DeFi activity and RWA.xyz is an indicator of asset issuance/circulation volume, it is a normal structure for there to be a difference of tens of times even on the same chain. Based on distributed assets, Plume maintains the 9th position among all chains with an RWA value of $349M as of today. 3. The Direction Plume Pursues Just before or immediately after the Provenance incident (since it happened in the past, the timeline is uncertain), Plume wrote an article titled "TVL Is Meaningless": Part 1 / Part 2 Plume Network focuses more on metrics such as the number of wallets holding RWA and DAU than on TVL. In particular, since RWA is meaningful simply by being stored in a wallet, TVL concentrated in a single wallet is meaningless. If numerous users actually hold and utilize even small amounts, it can be considered adoption. However, since the number of wallets can be manipulated at will, it would be necessary to investigate this in detail using tools like Arkham. Although the foundation is unlikely to actually go so far as to manipulate it. 4. Conclusion There is no definitive answer as to who is right or wrong between rwa.xyz and defillama. Rather, it seems we need to research which methodology is appropriate to use in which situation. When tokenization was not yet mainstream, you could just clear your mind and look at the TVL, but times have changed, and this problem has arisen. The real problem is that for old-timers like me, whenever I learn about a protocol or blockchain I haven't heard of, I go to defillama and check the TVL first. This has practically become a first impression test, but that isn't everything. Even old-timers need to change their mindset a bit. Links - Full text of 0xngmi's tweet - Question about why Plume Network's TVL suddenly decreased + 0xngmi's original response - Plume Network's shattered TVL - rwa.xyz Plume Page - Defillama TVL Methodology *Please let me know if the information is incorrect. I apologize for posting last time without doing proper research. *A representative of a Ripple ecosystem project, whom I met while participating in Devrell on Ripple, is looking for a marketing intern: Check the job posting. Please send your documents to sivax@sivax.io.