Understand why TVL is used for scaling solutions, despite flaws that everyone has pointed out [Reworking TVL on L2BEAT].
What should the right metric be for bridges though? Should it be TVL or USD volume?
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I’d say Volume !
High TVL has its own indication but Volume is more important imo.
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Volume can (and will) be tracked but it does sound to me like a super easy metric to game by simply moving funds back and forth. Locking liquidity in a bridge is much harder as you do need to have these funds in the first place.
Unique users can also be faked, but probably requires more effort
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That’s fair and it does seem like you are being judicious in what you are counting as “TVL” (i.e. only specific big tokens) as I think TVL is also quite easy to game if you counted everything.
Only pushback I would give to your criticism of volume is bridge fees potentially somewhat mitigate this, though for large transfers across bridges with a mix of fixed & variable (or 100% fixed) the fixed portion of fees would diminish as % of value transferred. I still think volume more accurately captures economic activity in a bridge.
Maybe the right takeaway from this conversation is that any metric in crypto will be gamed, so it’s on the user of the analytics & dashboard to be prudent when interpreting data.
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