Proof of Reserves is an attestation by companies to show that their assets match what they project. So far, in crypto, this process is done by a trusted third-party agency to certify that the assets held by a crypto firm on behalf of its users are intact using the Merkle Tree system.
The concept of Proof of Reserves, which has been part of the bitcoin ecosystem, became more popular after the collapse of FTX in November. Although the idea has been used for a long while, Binance spearheaded its comeback as an important metric to evaluate the health of a crypto exchange and which has been adopted by more exchanges and implemented
Some of those exchanges include:
Binance
After the FTX collapse, Binance was the first exchange to release its Proof-of-Reserves on November 25, 2022. It had 582,485.9302 BTC on-chain as against 575,742.4228 BTC as customer net balance, making it a healthy record.
However, another record that is not based on the Merkle Tree system was released on November 10, 2022, with these details: BTC (~475K BTC), ETH (~4.8M ETH), USDT (~17.6B USDT), BUSD (~21.7B BUSD), USDC (~601M USDC), and BNB (~58M BNB) in a cold wallet.
Bitfinex
Bitfinex is one of the oldest exchanges that was founded in 2012 in Hong Kong. It started as a peer-to-peer lending platform for only Bitcoin users, after which other cryptocurrencies were added.
Details from the company show that the parent company holds: 204338.17967717 BTC, 2018.5 L-BTC (Liquid), about 1000 BTC on the Lightning Network, and 1225600 ETH.
OKX
OKX, formerly known as OKEx, is a cryptocurrency exchange and derivative platform founded by Star Xu in Seychelles. It started in 2017 and is owned by Ok Group, the owner of Kucoin as well.
On November 23, 2022, the company published its Proof of Reserves which includes
105,879 BTC of OKX user wallet holdings and 108,434BTC of OKX wallet assets; 1,026,502 ETH of OKX user wallet holdings and 1,051,208 ETH of OKX wallet assets; and 3,016,827,845 USDT of OKX user wallet holdings and 3,061,068,937 USDT of OKX wallet assets.
Huobi
Huobi is another Seychelles-based crypto exchange founded in 2013. It currently has offices in Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan and the United States. Although the Chinese government banned Bitcoin in 2017, Huobi China still serves as a blockchain consulting and research platform.
From its Proof of Reserves, it has 32,000 BTC, 274,000 ETH, 820 million USDT, and 9.7 billion TRX. It also has reserves of XRP, Doge, USDC, XCN, Sol, Matic, Shib, EOS, Dot, BCH, and ADA.
Gate.io
Gate.io is recorded as the first crypto exchange to start sharing its proof of reserve in 2020. It was done in partnership with Armanino LLP, an auditing firm. However, the exchange recently integrated the Merkle Tree system into its proof of reserve procedure.
From the report, the exchange has a BTC reserve ratio of 108% and an ETH reserve ratio of 104%.
Other exchanges include Crypto.com, Kucoin, ByBit, Kraken, Luno, and Nexo, while WazirX promised to do the same soon. As the industry adjusts to the new realities, several exchanges are expected to take the same step to improve transparency and trust for users.
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Vitalik to create a Proof of Reserve protocol
What is Proof of Reserve?
