Many CEXs publish Proof of Reserves pages. Far fewer publish artifacts that an independent outsider can re-check without trusting the exchange’s own narrative. An address list and a coverage ratio are not the same as public, reproducible proofs.
Concrete case: Binance snapshot PR31OCT26 (snapshot time 2026-10-31 UTC).
https://www.binance.com/en/support/announcement/detail/185bd9a4717f44088b3be70287b8237fWhat is still missing from the public package:
1. No public, batch-verifiable wallet ownership proofs (so listed addresses are not shown to be controlled by the exchange in a way outsiders can verify)
2. No publicly downloadable global ZK proof + verifying key
3. No public trusted-setup transcript (the setup remains opaque)
On disclosed wallet/CSV rows where the claimed balance could be compared to on-chain balance, several numeric rows show less on-chain than the CSV claim. Summing those reportable shortfall rows (CSV − on-chain) and converting at ~2026-11-01 market prices is on the order of ~$686M.
Row-level report:
https://ardmere.github.io/docs/reports/binance/PR31OCT26-transparency-report.html---
What exchanges should publish for each snapshot (so outsiders can check)
1. Wallet ownership proofs third parties can batch-verify — not only an address list
2. A downloadable global ZK proof plus verifying key
3. A public trusted-setup transcript, or a proof system that needs no trusted setup
4. A final, stable merkle / commitment root on-chain
5. Wallet CSV / reserve claims that match on-chain balances at the disclosed addresses and heights
Without those, a PoR page is still mostly “trust us.”
Corrections welcome if any public artifact above was misread.
(Optional method write-up, if useful:
https://ardmere.github.io/docs/exchange-reserve-transparency-whitepaper.html )
