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RESEARCH · THE GAUNTLET

The factors we tested — and dropped.

Most crypto tools hide their failures behind a 30-indicator dashboard. We publish ours. Each candidate ran the same out-of-sample gauntlet; one survived. The pile of rejections is why the survivor is worth trusting.

FAILED-FACTOR LOG
Why open interest failed our test Independent of funding, but its edge over funding + momentum was insignificant and fragile out-of-sample.Why low volatility failed our test Looked like a winner on one year of survivor data — then a deeper, survivorship-corrected test inverted the verdict.Why momentum failed our test Finance’s most famous factor was insignificant on our universe and its sign flipped between bull and bear regimes.Why illiquidity failed our test A portfolio Sharpe near 1 with an information coefficient of zero — a tail-driven, survivorship-soaked small-cap lottery.Why on-chain growth failed our test Genuinely independent of funding and price-neutral — and still below our significance bar on a clean test.Why DeFi TVL failed our test TVL is measured in dollars, so "TVL growth" is partly just the coin’s price in disguise.

Also dropped, each for a verified reason: momentum, low volatility, on-chain address growth, DeFi TVL, and illiquidity. The one that passed: funding crowding.

How a factor earns its place →How the score works

Ioxer is research, not investment advice. IOX is a crowding read — not a price prediction, not a buy/sell signal.

Research — the factors we tested and dropped | Ioxer