Wallet Registries
Before token lists existed, wallets shipped their icons as a directory of files in a public repository, and adding a token meant opening a pull request against it. Three of those repositories still take submissions, and each now has its own page. They differ less in format than in who they let in:
| Registry | Channel | Cost | Bar to entry | Pace |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trust Wallet | pull request to trustwallet/assets |
500 TWT or 2.5 BNB per pull request | CoinMarketCap listing, audit, 10,000 holders and 15,000 transactions | human review after the fee is paid |
| MetaMask | pull request to MetaMask/contract-metadata |
none | signs of activity, a website citing the address | 310 pull requests open; one outside submission took eight weeks |
| ethereum-lists | pull request to ethereum-lists/tokens |
none | a valid file; sixteen chains only | months between merges |
All three key a token by its checksummed address inside a per-chain folder, so a token deployed at the same address on six chains is six sets of files, whichever registry takes it.
Most of what a wallet shows is not in any of them#
The direction of travel is away from curated repositories. MetaMask decides what to detect by counting how many third-party lists carry a token — swap routers, bridges, CoinGecko, CoinMarketCap, Trust Wallet, and its own repository among them — and its current code wants three. The sources carrying the most tokens are swap and bridge routers, whose inclusion rules were not examined, and a CoinGecko listing is another. Each repository above is one input among many.
Trust Wallet is the exception: its repository is still the whole source for the logo it shows, and its entry bar is the highest.
Where the effort belongs instead#
For a token that launched this month, the Trust Wallet route is closed by its holder count, the MetaMask repository is a slow maybe, and ethereum-lists reaches few wallets and not every chain. The effort belongs in the routes that are open on day one: a token list you host, wallet_watchAsset in your own interface, and the explorer update. Revisit this page when the holder count is five digits.