“We really don’t believe there is large-scale, authentic use of A7A5 outside of A7,” Keegan said in an email, referring to the token’s issuer. He added that transaction volume routinely collapses on weekends because much of the activity appears to be tied to business-to-business transfers involving the Russian-linked exchange Grinex.
Meanwhile, Tom Robinson, co-founder of another blockchain analytics firm, Elliptic, also said the token has lost momentum. He said monthly transaction volumes have fallen more than 90% since January and are down 96% from their peak last year, following sanctions imposed by the US, EU and UK, as well as the collapse of Grinex earlier this year.
“The cherry-picked trade and transaction numbers provided by A7A5 are consistent with Elliptic’s analysis,” said Robinson. “But they hide the obvious trend: that the A7A5 is failing in its goal of enabling circumvention of Russian sanctions.”
A7A5’s Ogienko denied these claims, saying that because the token’s activity is mostly in DeFi, it is not fully captured by major crypto data sites. “These outdated principles and measurements do not provide users around the world with objective information about the A7A5,” he told CoinDesk in a statement via Telegram.
He said that data providers, including CoinMarketCap, CoinGecko and DeFiLlama, rely too heavily on centralized exchange data, creating what he claimed is “a generally discriminatory approach, contrary to UN principles.”
