Editorial policy

1 · How a topic enters the pipeline

Three sources feed the topic list. Reader email — corrections, repeated questions, "I wish someone wrote about X" notes. Primary documents we read for our own portfolio — new attestation letters, regulator releases, court filings, exchange policy updates. Editor-run transactions that turned up something interesting — an unexpected fee, a quirky bridge route, a withdrawal that took longer than the marketing page promised.

Wen Lu writes a one-paragraph proposal: what the piece is, why now, who reads it, what data has to be inside. Heng Zhou marks anything that needs a fresh transaction, a new disclosure pull or a regulator citation. If we cannot say what an article would add beyond what the issuer already publishes, the topic is dropped.

2 · Editor-tested transactions

Every operational claim has a transaction behind it. The desk maintains two real wallets per chain — one for hot tests (small balance, throwaway addresses), one for slower review-style runs. When a piece talks about a fee figure, a bridge speed, a CEX confirmation count or a withdrawal allowance, the underlying hash and screenshot are stored privately and the figure is quoted in the article. If we cannot run the transaction (for example, a fee tier we do not qualify for), the article says so.

Numbers are pulled fresh. We do not republish a competitor's table. We do not quote a screenshot more than ninety days old without re-running.

3 · Source rules for every number

Each numerical claim has a source category attached:

• Primary attestation or audit. Tether's BDO quarterly attestation. Circle's monthly attestation. Paxos monthly. First Digital Trust monthly. MakerDAO end-of-month collateral snapshot.
• Regulator release. SEC, CFTC, NYAG, NYDFS, FinCEN, OFAC, FCA, ESMA, MAS, HKMA, SFC, FSA.
• On-chain. Etherscan, TRONSCAN, Solscan, BscScan, Arbiscan. The transaction hash is recorded.
• Editor transaction. Internal hash plus screenshot of the issuing dashboard.
• Third-party tracker. DeFiLlama, CoinGecko, CoinMarketCap, Dune query. Used only as cross-check, not as the only source.

News outlets and second-hand reporting are not sources. If a Bloomberg or Reuters piece points at a primary document, we read that document and cite it directly.

4 · Risk language

Risk does not get buried at the foot of a piece. It sits in the first three screens. Specifically:

• If the article describes any token that has historically depegged, the depeg low and the date sit in the lead section.
• If the article touches a chain or bridge that has had a major exploit, the exploit and the dollar size of the loss are named the first time the chain is referenced.
• If a yield figure appears, the source (CEX product, DeFi pool, RWA strategy) and its smart-contract or custodial risk are named in the same paragraph.
• If the operation is restricted in a jurisdiction we know about, that restriction is noted, not omitted.

5 · Tone

Short sentences. Specific verbs. Documents named by document. No hype. No "as we all know". No "ultimate" anything. If we cannot say something plainly, the paragraph is not finished.

The desk has a short list of banned phrases — generic crypto marketing language we do not let into a final draft. The list is maintained by Wen Lu and applied at proofread.

6 · Corrections

Three rules, repeated from the corrections page for clarity:

• If we are wrong on a fact, the fix appears on the article and an entry appears on the corrections page within forty-eight hours of confirmation.
• The corrections entry carries the date, the article URL, the old line, the new line and the reason.
• We do not silently rewrite history.

7 · Conflicts of interest

The desk earns a referral service fee from Binance through code BN16188. That is the only commercial relationship on the site. It is disclosed at the top of every page, on the disclaimer and at the foot of any article that mentions Binance.

No issuer pays the desk. No exchange other than Binance pays the desk. No project provides "marketing tokens" in exchange for coverage. If a future commercial relationship is added, it goes on this page first.

8 · Use of AI tools

The desk uses AI tools the same way most editorial outlets now do — for brainstorming outlines, for first-pass language checks, for summarising long PDFs into reading notes. AI output never appears unedited on the site. Every published paragraph is written or re-written by Wen Lu or Heng Zhou after the source documents are read by hand.