Diversification requires exposures that respond to different drivers. Two coins can have entirely different technology, teams and use cases and still be a single bet, because what actually moves them is the same.
The test
Not “are these different assets” but “what would have to happen for one to rise while the other falls”. If the honest answer is a project-specific event, then in the absence of one they are the same trade.
Applied across a portfolio of L1 tokens, that answer is uncomfortable: they share a driver, a holder base and a liquidity condition — the family argument in layer-1 tokens.
Three ways the sameness is hidden
Different narratives, same beta. Each has its own story, and stories do not move price when risk appetite turns.
Different sectors, same marginal buyer. The same participants allocate across all of them, so an allocation decision moves all of them together — the mechanism behind ten positions, one bet.
Correlation measured in calm. Divergence in quiet periods disappears under stress, and stress is what diversification was for.
Where genuine difference does exist
In the structural families rather than in the projects. A gold-backed token has a genuinely different underlying — PAXG. A venue token responds to platform activity. A liquid staking token carries a peg that can move independently of the underlying.
Those are real distinctions because the mechanism differs, not because the branding does.
What follows
Size by exposure rather than by name count, and be especially careful under cross margin, where correlated positions draw on the same collateral in the same direction at the same moment. A book that is one trade should be sized as one trade.