Goldman Sachs, MSCI, and Coin Metrics today announced the introduction of datonomy, a new categorization scheme for the market in digital assets. The new data service datonomy categorises money and tokens according to their intended purpose. Datonomy can be licenced for a number of use cases, including the review and assessment of portfolio performance and reporting, and is designed to offer a consistent, standardised way to help market participants view and analyse the digital assets ecosystem. This will increase transparency into how the market is moving.

The datonomy Advisory Board (“Advisory Board”) and other market participants may provide feedback on prospective revisions, however MSCI is the owner and exclusive administrator of this new classification system. The Advisory Board will be made up of representatives from Goldman Sachs, MSCI, Coin Metrics, and other organisations with knowledge of maintaining datonomy. The first group of third-party participants will be revealed later.

Over the past few years, the market for digital assets has grown quickly because to ongoing innovation brought about by the development of new protocols and applications. Participants in the digital asset market are eager to comprehend this industry’s wide range of use cases, allocate cash, and manage investments. Performance tracking and risk management are becoming more and more important in the markets for digital assets as the asset class continues to develop and market volatility persists. Market participants want assistance in navigating the world of digital assets and categorising these assets in order to more accurately identify their risk profile and comprehend their returns. As the market for digital assets develops, this gap will be filled by Datonomy, which may be used as the direct foundation for portfolio management, reporting, benchmarking, research, and analysis.

“The collaboration brings together MSCI’s expertise in critical decision support tools and services, Coin Metrics’ intelligence in the digital assets space, and Goldman Sachs’ innovative platforms paired with over 150 years of experience in financial markets to help solve this problem for clients”, “Given our commitment to providing developer services, and as a trusted data analytics provider to our institutional clients, creating reliable data services for the emerging digital asset community is a strategic focus and natural extension to our existing business.”

Anne Marie Darling, Head of Marquee Client Strategy and Distribution at Goldman Sachs

This new system of categorising digital assets aims to give market participants a unified view of the market, enabling them to track trends across various industries, such as Decentralized Finance and Smart Contract Platforms, screen assets using a variety of different filters based on their goals, and comprehend aggregated properties of these assets at the portfolio level.

“We firmly believe a consistent and standardized framework for the classification of digital assets is essential to support investors’ ability to evaluate the market”, “As a co-founder of the Global Industry Classification Standard®, we are leveraging our general experience of what’s worked in equities classification systems to offer an efficient investment tool helping clients to understand digital asset trends, identify investment opportunities, and measure the exposure of their portfolios by sector to uncover drivers of performance and risk.”

Stéphane Mattatia, Managing Director, Global Head of Derivatives Licensing and Thematic Indexes at MSCI

“As the leading provider of crypto financial intelligence, we are committed to bringing transparency into this ever evolving and complex market to help our clients better understand and adopt it”, “This collaboration represents a significant leap forward for the industry as a whole, establishing a coherent and future-proof structure to monitor and analyze the digital assets ecosystem.”

Tim Rice, CEO of Coin Metrics

Goldman Sachs, MSCI, and Coin Metrics all offer direct data subscription feeds that can be used to access Datonomy.