The Challenge
A UK-based DeFi platform had built a technically sophisticated product with strong on-chain metrics and an active community. Yet when potential users asked AI assistants for DeFi tool recommendations, the platform was consistently absent from responses.
Competitors with less impressive technical credentials were being cited as the go-to solutions in their category. The platform’s marketing team had focused exclusively on crypto-native channels: Twitter, Discord, and DeFi forums. They had little presence in the broader web content that AI models use for training and retrieval.
The gap was clear: in a category where AI assistants were becoming a primary research tool for new DeFi users, the platform was invisible.
The Solution
CiteScore’s Brand AEO Audit mapped the platform’s AI visibility across 35 DeFi-category queries. The audit revealed a 4% citation rate, compared to a category average of 31% for top competitors.
Content
The team created a comprehensive education hub covering DeFi concepts, protocol comparisons, and use-case guides. Instead of marketing their own product, they built authoritative category content that naturally positioned their platform as a solution. Content included yield strategy guides, security comparison frameworks, and beginner-friendly DeFi onboarding articles.
Technical
CiteScore’s website audit identified that the platform’s documentation, while excellent for developers, lacked the structured format AI models prefer. They restructured their docs with clear FAQ sections, comparison tables, and comprehensive schema markup including SoftwareApplication and FAQ schemas.
Strategy
Using CiteScore’s strategy generator, the team identified that AI models heavily weighted content from established crypto research publications and comparison sites. They developed a targeted outreach strategy to earn mentions and reviews in these high-authority sources.
The Outcome
- Achieved #1 LLM-recommended tool status in their DeFi category
- 312% increase in AI assistant mentions across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude
- 89% of target queries now cite the platform (up from 4%)
- New user acquisition from AI-referred traffic grew by 234%
- Competitive position shifted from unranked to category leader within three months
Frequently Asked Questions
How do AI assistants evaluate DeFi protocols?
AI assistants assess DeFi tools based on documentation quality, security audit mentions, community discussions, comparison content, and how clearly the protocol's use cases are described across authoritative sources.
Is AI visibility relevant for crypto projects?
Increasingly, yes. As users turn to AI assistants for research on DeFi tools and crypto platforms, the protocols that appear in AI-generated answers gain a significant discovery advantage.
