Pillars and factors

Every covered vault is scored 0–100 across four pillars built from sixteen underlying factors. Fifteen factors contribute additively within their pillar; the sixteenth, exploit history, acts as a multiplier on the entire Safety pillar — a protocol with a serious prior incident cannot average the damage away. An incident counts only if it hit the contracts we score and left depositors with an uncovered loss; incidents in legacy or adjacent products, integrators, or fully reimbursed events are recorded but not scored. The pillars combine into the composite in a way that punishes imbalance: a vault cannot paper over a weak pillar with a strong one. A fragile vault paying a huge yield stays a fragile vault.

On purpose, AtlasYield does not publish exact weights, formulas, or thresholds: a score you can game is a score no one should trust. The factors below are described at concept level.

Pillar 1 — Yield

Not just how much a vault pays, but how trustworthy that yield is.

Factor	What it measures
Yield level	Current payout, read in the context of its asset class — a high headline number is weighed against the risk taken to earn it.
APY stability	How steady the yield has been; wild week-to-week swings read as lower quality.
APY persistence	Whether the yield has endured rather than spiking briefly and collapsing.
Yield source	Where the return actually comes from — real lending demand, trading fees, or temporary incentives — and how legible that source is.

Pillar 2 — Safety

How likely the vault is to lose principal to a failure, an exploit, or bad governance.

Factor	What it measures
Audit quality	Depth and credibility of the protocol’s security reviews — who did them and how thorough they were. Firms are tiered by reputation (tier 1: Trail of Bits, OpenZeppelin, Spearbit/Cantina, ChainSecurity, Certora, Sigma Prime, Consensys Diligence, OtterSec, Zellic, or formal verification by any firm). Only audits of the contracts we score count, and an audit older than 24 months counts for less.
Protocol maturity	Time live holding real money — evidence that survives no other test.
TVL depth (safety)	How much capital sits in the vault; deeper pools are harder to manipulate.
TVL stability	Whether deposits are steady or prone to sudden flight.
Admin topology	Who can change the vault and how fast, read per vault every day: timelocks, multisig strength (strong = 3+ signers and a majority), and for a single admin key, the curator’s track record (40 established, 10 unknown or new). Never below 10.
Chain security	The settlement assurance of the chain underneath the vault — whether it settles its own state, who operates the sequencer, and whether you keep a permissionless exit if that operator censors or halts.
Exploit history	Whether the protocol has been broken before. Works as a multiplier on the whole pillar.

Pillar 3 — Liquidity

How reliably you can get your money back out — quickly, in full, and at size.

Factor	What it measures
Withdrawal type	Instant on demand, or through a queue, cooldown, or lock-up.
TVL depth (liquidity)	Whether the pool is deep enough to exit a real position without moving the price against yourself.

Pillar 4 — Sustainability

Whether the yield is built to last — or quietly living on borrowed time.

Factor	What it measures
Emission dependency	How much of the return leans on token incentives that can be cut at any time.
Asset risk	The risk of the underlying asset itself — even a flawless vault inherits the fate of what it holds.
Utilization health	For lending markets, whether utilization sits in a healthy band rather than pinned dangerously high.

Overview

The Atlas Score

The Atlas Engine

Asset flow

Monitoring

Legal

Pillar 1 — Yield

Pillar 2 — Safety

Pillar 3 — Liquidity

Pillar 4 — Sustainability

​Pillar 1 — Yield

​Pillar 2 — Safety

​Pillar 3 — Liquidity

​Pillar 4 — Sustainability

Pillar 1 — Yield

Pillar 2 — Safety

Pillar 3 — Liquidity

Pillar 4 — Sustainability