Turtle bets liquidity not vanity will rule crypto with new leaderboard system

Turtle has introduced a new framework designed to measure and reward one of the scarcest assets in digital finance, onchain liquidity.

The company announced the launch of the Turtle Liquidity Leaderboard, which ranks participants by verified deposits, user distribution, and engagement multipliers, creating a standardized scoreboard for protocols and liquidity providers.

The launch comes at a time when market depth has weakened across digital assets. Kaiko reported that liquidity for the top 50 altcoins by market depth fell about 30% in the first quarter of 2025, reflecting both declining market-making incentives and concentration in fewer assets. With protocols competing for durable liquidity, Turtle’s system reframes how capital allocation is tracked and rewarded.

The leaderboard applies three categories to participants. A Liquidity Score measures time-weighted deposits into supported partners, a Distribution Score tracks liquidity brought by user referrals, and Boosts apply multipliers for verifiable identity and activity.

Unlike points programs or engagement leaderboards, which often rely on impressions or social metrics, the framework is based on capital that cannot be easily falsified.

Turtle’s chief executive, Essi, said in the release that liquidity has been overlooked in favor of vanity metrics and the company aims to center it as the signal that matters most.

The announcement builds on momentum Turtle has generated through earlier campaigns. Its distribution protocol has coordinated liquidity for ecosystem launches since 2024, mobilizing over $4 billion in deposits across more than 300,000 wallets, according to company materials.

During Arbitrum’s TAC “Summoning” event earlier this year, Turtle vaults attracted more than $100 million in the first week, $150 million by the second, and ultimately around $790 to $800 million in liquidity by the time of the mainnet launch, with Curve founder Michael Egorov among those participating.

The firm’s network scale was cited again in May when it secured a $6.2 million seed round led by THEIA, with participation from Susquehanna International Group, ConsenSys, and Nomura’s Laser Digital.

The company has also experimented with cross-domain leaderboards. In June, Turtle went live on Kaito’s Yapper attention leaderboard, which ranks participants by engagement. The liquidity leaderboard extends this approach to capital flows, aligning protocols and allocators by measuring verifiable commitments rather than impressions.

Chief technology officer Nick Thoma described it as combining liquidity and distribution with social incentives to give protocols capital that remains.

Comparable coordination systems have recently drawn market interest. Incentive platforms such as Royco have reached nearly $3 billion in total value locked through mechanism design that channels capital across protocols, and long-standing bribe and ve-token models on Curve and Velodrome continue to influence liquidity allocation. By creating a transparent and composable scoreboard, Turtle aims to provide a competitive layer that protocols can also white-label for their own launches.

Future iterations of the leaderboard are planned to include protocol-specific rankings, further SocialFi integrations, and mechanics merging cultural engagement with financial contribution.

Turtle positions the system as a way for liquidity providers to gain visibility and for protocols to achieve more efficient distribution of capital.

The framework is scheduled to expand in the coming months.

Turtle said the leaderboard will evolve into a white-label component that protocols can embed directly into their campaigns, combining time-weighted deposits, referral flows, and verified user signals into a single measure of market commitment.