Docs / Safety Grade
Safety Grade
The Safety Grade summarises overall stablecoin safety as a single letter from A+ (safest) to F (failed/highest risk). It combines three pillars — peg stability, pre-depeg stress, and structural design — into a 0–100 safety score, then maps that score to a grade band.
Grade Bands
| Grade | Safety score | What it means |
|---|
| A+ | 90 – 100 | Highest safety. Fiat-backed or well-collateralised, zero current stress. |
| A | 80 – 89 | Excellent. Minor imperfections in structure or slight stress. |
| A- | 70 – 79 | Very good. Low risk score with slightly weaker governance or mechanism. |
| B+ | 60 – 69 | Good. Modest risk or structural trade-offs. |
| B | 50 – 59 | Acceptable. Noticeable structural or stability weaknesses. |
| B- | 40 – 49 | Below average. Elevated structural risk or early stress signals. |
| C+ | 30 – 39 | Caution warranted. Algorithmic mechanism, high leverage, or watch-tier score. |
| C | 20 – 29 | High risk. Significant design flaws or warning-tier risk score. |
| C- | 10 – 19 | Very high risk. |
| D | 5 – 9 | Critical tier score (≥75) — active depeg likely. |
| F | 0 – 4 | Failed or dead. Score is 0 regardless of structural inputs. |
Three Pillars
The safety score is a weighted blend of three independent assessments.
| Pillar | Weight | Source | Description |
|---|
| Peg Stability | 40% | Risk score (0–100) | Inverted depeg risk score. A risk score of 0 contributes the full 40 pts; a score of 100 contributes 0. Refreshes every 5 minutes. |
| DEWS Stress | 30% | DEWS score (0–100) | Inverted pre-depeg stress score. Captures early warning signals before a depeg manifests in price. Redistributed proportionally when unavailable. |
| Structural | 30% | Peg mechanism + governance | Composite of how inherently safe the design is: peg mechanism (65%) + governance type (35%) + token-type adjustment. Independent of current market behaviour. |
Structural Sub-scores
The structural pillar scores the peg mechanism and governance design independently of price behaviour. Composite = 0.65 × mechanism + 0.35 × governance + type_adjustment.
Peg Mechanism
| Mechanism | Score | Examples |
|---|
| fiat_reserve | 100 | USDC, USDT, FDUSD |
| rwa | 82 | BUIDL, mTBILL, USDY |
| commodity | 72 | PAXG, XAUT |
| crypto_collateral | 55 | DAI, LUSD, crvUSD |
| delta_neutral | 40 | USDe |
| algo | 15 | FEI, MIM (legacy) |
Governance Type
| Governance | Score | Description |
|---|
| cefi | 80 | Regulated, audited centralised issuer |
| defi | 70 | On-chain governance, no single point of failure |
| cefi_dependent | 65 | DeFi protocol with CeFi collateral dependency |
Token-type Adjustments
| Type | Adjustment |
|---|
| yield | +3 |
| rwa | +2 |
| gold | +1 |
| fx | +1 |
| standard | 0 |
| synthetic | −5 |
| algo | −10 |
Hard Caps
Structural quality cannot mask an actively depegging token. Hard caps override the blended score whenever the real-time risk score is elevated:
| Condition | Max safety score | Max grade |
|---|
| risk_score ≥ 75 (Critical) | 9 | D |
| risk_score ≥ 50 (Warning) | 39 | C+ |
| risk_score ≥ 25 (Watch) | 69 | B+ |
| status = "dead" | 0 | F (always) |
Update Cadence
- Peg Stability pillar — updates every 5 minutes (live risk score).
- DEWS Stress pillar — recalculated daily at 04:00 UTC.
- Structural pillar — static until categorisation data is updated.
- Safety grade output — recalculated daily at 04:15 UTC, after DEWS.
