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.
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. |
| 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 | How much power admins and multisigs hold — upgradeability, timelocks, who can move funds. |
| 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 |
|---|
| Yield source durability | Whether the yield’s underlying engine is structural or a temporary anomaly. |
| 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. |
