--- name: three-frame-valuation description: "Value any early crypto project in three frames: fundamental anchor, live-product floor, narrative ceiling. Conclusion first, frames equal length, everything else short." --- # Three-frame valuation The format Ben agreed on 30 Aug 2026, built while valuing TWO / Twofold against the Robinhood Chain infra tier. Use it for every project analysis going forward. ## The governing insight **Do not value a day-one or day-two project on its TVL or revenue.** Neither has had time to exist. It will grow or it will not, and that is unknowable at the point of the screen. What is knowable: is the product live, and is it a scam. If the product is live and it is not a scam, it gets a category valuation, because the upside if they deliver is enormous and the market prices that option. So Frame 1 is a floor reference, never a target. Frame 2 is the frame that actually governs an early project. Frame 3 is the trade. --- ## Output shape, strict 1. **Conclusion first.** Two or three sentences in plain language that answer the exact question asked. "Based on X, currently Y, so Z." Include the current cap, whether it is cheap, fair or rich, and what the trade actually is. 2. **The three frames.** Compact, and roughly equal length to each other. Four to six bullets each. Every frame names a dollar range in its heading. 3. **Everything else much shorter than the frames.** One line each: the single biggest risk, fatal flags found or none, tier and trigger, exit depth at Ben's real size. No dashes or em dashes. Full contract addresses, never truncated. No hedging, no moralising, no "do your own research". --- ## Frame 1: fundamental anchor **What it is worth today if it never grows.** - Pick the denominator the sector is actually measured on: TVL for liquidity and DeFi infra, annualised revenue for launchpads and fee-capturing protocols, deposits for lending, volume for perps. - Get the multiple from two or three live comps in the same sector on the same chain. Compute it yourself, do not quote a sector median from memory. - State the candidate's own multiple and how far above or below the comp band it sits. - Give the dollar answer, then immediately label it: **this is a floor reference, not a target**. On an early project say why in one clause. ## Frame 2: live-product floor **What this chain or sector pays for a deployed, non-scam product with a real site, before usage arrives.** - This is the frame that governs an early project and it is usually where the price already is. - Build the band from three or four tokens that are live, real, older, and still unproven. Not the winners and not the dead. - Name the closest structural analogue explicitly, with its age and its cap, and say how far above or below the candidate trades. - Verdict in one line: cheap, fair, or fully priced against this band. ## Frame 3: narrative ceiling **What comparable companies in the same sector actually trade at, and whether that valuation is backed.** - Name two or three same-sector comps with their caps. - **Then answer the question that decides the whole frame: is that valuation backed by TVL, usage and revenue, or is it pure narrative?** This is not optional and it is the step that gets skipped. - **If pure narrative**, say so loudly with the receipt, because it means narrative alone can carry the candidate there and no fundamental growth is required. - **If backed**, state the exact gap the candidate must close: "needs 17.6x its current TVL to match X at X's own multiple." - Give the multiple from here as an x, not just a dollar figure. --- ## The two traps, they cut in opposite directions **DefiLlama UNDERSTATES.** Its adapters hardcode contract lists that go stale, and it cannot price most chain-native tokens, so their side of every LP position reads as zero. Receipt: Delta on Robinhood Chain reported $16,430 against its own endpoint's $1,509,084, a 92x understatement, because the adapter covered 590 of 8,856 position NFTs and blacklisted the unpriceable DELTA. **Treat any DefiLlama TVL as a floor. Find the project's own /tvl or /stats endpoint before quoting it.** **The project's own numbers OVERSTATE.** Receipts from the same session: HOOKR's own /api/protocol-stats reported 3,544,864 ETH of volume on a chain whose sector does $22k a day. Twofold's site headlines $422M that is a third-party vault it does not custody. PROLOGUE is marketed as ve(3,3) fee capture while `protocolFee` reads 0 on every hooked pool and /vote renders "Coming soon". **So: find the project's own API, then verify the mechanism on chain.** Neither source alone is trustworthy. ### How to find a project's real numbers - Fetch the site. If server HTML is empty it is a SPA. Pull every `