Overall market
How large and how active is crypto overall?
Here, Bitcoin, stablecoins, memecoins and other market segments matter. They influence liquidity, dominance, risk appetite and capital rotation.
DPMI sector selection · DPMI-SF-1.1
Why exactly these seven sectors?
Because the DPMI does not try to recreate the entire crypto market. It deliberately measures the market's productive segment and creates separate sectors only where a functional domain is distinct, economically relevant and methodologically stable enough.
The most important rule
Market capitalization is a weight — not an admission ticket
A large market value answers the question “How much capital does the market assign to this asset?” It does not automatically answer “Is there a productive protocol, network or application behind it?”
That is why market capitalization matters in the DPMI only after methodological eligibility: first, Dudelytics checks whether an asset belongs to the productive universe at all. Only within that universe does size affect weighting.
Dude take
Market capitalization is not a VIP wristband in the DPMI. An asset can be huge and still play a different economic role from what the DPMI is designed to measure. Excluded does not mean “unimportant” or “bad” — only: not a fit for this specific measurement question.
Two different questions
Overall market and Productive Market are not competitors
Dudelytics does not pretend the rest of the crypto market does not exist. It simply does not force everything into the same index.
DPMI
How is the productive segment developing?
This view focuses on active protocols, networks, infrastructure and applications with an independent function for third parties and a traceable token role.
Why separate them?
So the measurement question stays clear
An index does not get better by including everything. It gets better when it is clear what it measures — and what it explicitly does not.
The seven functional domains
What each DPMI sector represents independently
The order is not a ranking. What matters is the distinct productive core function of each sector.
DPMI DeFi
Decentralized financial functions
Protocols whose core product provides financial functions such as trading, lending, liquidity, derivatives or comparable open financial infrastructure.
DPMI RWA
Bridge to real-world assets
Productive infrastructure that makes real-world assets, claims or traditional financial structures accessible, manageable or usable onchain.
DPMI AI
AI as the core product
Networks and infrastructure where machine intelligence, models, data, agents or decentralized AI resources are the actual product — not just a marketing label.
DPMI DePIN
Decentralized resources and physical infrastructure
Networks that coordinate, provide or reward real or scarce resources in a decentralized way — for example compute, wireless, sensor or related infrastructure.
DPMI Interoperability
Connections between systems
Infrastructure whose core task is communication, data or asset transfer, and coordination between different chains, networks or execution environments.
DPMI Privacy & ZK
Privacy, proofs and verifiable compute
Privacy, ZK proof, prover, verification and confidential/verifiable compute infrastructure when that function itself is the core product.
DPMI Smart Contract Platforms
Programmable execution networks
General blockchain, rollup or comparable execution platforms on which independent third parties can run smart contracts and applications.
Deliberate exclusions
Why major market segments still do not belong in the DPMI
These exclusions are not judgments about usefulness, popularity or possible price performance. They prevent economically different things from being mixed into one index.
| Segment | DPMI treatment | Why? |
|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin | Outside the DPMI | Bitcoin is a central market and benchmark asset, but in the Dudelytics model it primarily answers the money/store-of-value question. The DPMI instead measures productive protocol, infrastructure and application economies. |
| Stablecoins | Stablecoin tokens themselves excluded | Their market capitalization mainly describes circulating stable units of account or claims. Their token price is intended to remain stable and therefore does not measure the value development of a productive protocol. Productive stablecoin infrastructure, by contrast, can in principle be captured through an appropriate productive sector. |
| Memecoins / pure hype coins | Excluded | Even very high valuations can mainly reflect speculative demand, attention and liquidity. Without an independent productive protocol function, they would shift the DPMI from “productivity” toward “popularity”. |
| Wrapped / bridged assets | Excluded | They typically represent an existing asset in another technical form. Adding them separately would count the same economic exposure more than once. |
| Pure staking/LST representations | Excluded | A receipt or staking-representation token is not automatically an independent productive project. The underlying protocol may be relevant separately; the technical representation is not counted twice. |
| Pure payment/currency/store-of-value coins | Excluded without an additional productive protocol function | The DPMI separates monetary function from productive platform, protocol or application activity. An additional productive core function can change the classification; payment use alone is not enough. |
| Tokenized assets | The asset itself excluded | A tokenized fund, Treasury claim or commodity is an asset representation. The RWA protocol or infrastructure behind it can be productive and may therefore belong in the DPMI. |
Important: exclusion from the DPMI does not mean Dudelytics ignores the segment. Overall-market data, dominance, liquidity, risk appetite or a separate measure of speculative heat can explicitly monitor such segments — just outside the productive index.
Productive, but not a separate sector
Why not every category gets an eighth, ninth or fifteenth DPMI line
A productive project does not automatically require its own public sector. Many labels describe subsegments, technical architectures or cross-cutting functions.
| Category | Why no separate sector today? | Typical classification |
|---|---|---|
| DEX / Lending | Independent products, but methodologically clear subsegments of DeFi. | DPMI DeFi |
| Layer 2 | “L2” primarily describes an architecture or scaling layer, not necessarily a distinct economic function. | General execution L2s can be Smart Contract Platforms; specialized systems are classified by their core function. |
| Oracles | Oracles are important productive infrastructure, but operate as a cross-cutting function across multiple ecosystems. Dudelytics does not create a sector simply because a technical category exists. | Main DPMI; depending on the core product, close to interoperability/infrastructure. |
| Restaking | Restaking is primarily a security/capital mechanism that can span multiple product classes. | By actual core product rather than mechanism. |
| Payments | Payments are a use case that can run across smart-contract platforms, DeFi, RWA and interoperability. Pure currency coins are outside the DPMI anyway. | By productive core function. |
| Storage | Decentralized storage and resource networks are productive, but today do not form a sufficiently distinct public functional domain alongside the existing infrastructure taxonomy. | Depending on the system, typically DePIN/infrastructure. |
| Modular / Data Availability | “Modular” describes a system architecture. Execution, settlement, data availability and interoperability can have different core functions. | Classified by the product actually sold or provided. |
| Gaming / NFT | These are broad application and narrative spaces with very different business models. A temporary narrative alone is not a stable DPMI sector. | Can be productive; a separate sector only when the market structure is persistently clear, broad and stably distinguishable. |
When can a new sector be created?
A new sector needs more than a trend label
Dudelytics expands the sector taxonomy only when several conditions are met at the same time. The criteria are deliberately functional, not performance-driven.
- Distinct function
- The sector answers its own productive-market question and is not merely a subcategory or technical mechanism of an existing sector.
- Breadth
- The current sector methodology publishes an index only with at least 10 robust components. One dominant project or a few borderline cases are not enough.
- Economic relevance
- The function must be more than a short-lived narrative and must be meaningfully observable as an independent part of the productive market.
- Stable boundaries
- It must be possible to explain clearly why one project belongs in the sector and another does not. The more special cases are required, the weaker the taxonomy.
- Productive substance
- Each component must still satisfy the published DPMI principles on its own. A new sector is not a back door around the Productive Gate.
- Measurability
- The sector must remain technically calculable over time and be extendable with real observed history. Missing history is not invented.
What if the market changes?
Sectors are stable — but not sacred
A taxonomy should remain comparable, but it must not become a fossil. A sector can be reviewed, merged or eventually removed if its distinct function disappears, its robust component base no longer holds, or the boundary to another sector becomes permanently artificial.
Such changes are not applied retroactively to make a chart look better. They require a documented methodology change and are carried forward transparently from the time of the change.
Internal multi-tags remain possible because real projects can span several functions. These tags are analytical aids — they do not automatically create a new public DPMI sector.
Bottom line
The DPMI would rather be clearly incomplete than completely unclear
The crypto market is larger than the DPMI — by design. The DPMI does not claim to represent “crypto as a whole.” It isolates a specific segment: productive protocols, networks, infrastructure and applications. The seven sectors divide that segment into functional domains that are as distinct as possible without turning every subcategory into its own index family.
That limitation is exactly what makes the index interpretable: what stays out is just as much a part of the methodology as what goes in.