On our October 3, 2026 record, Aave (AAVE) read B with a score of 73.6 at position 4 in our ranking. On our October 10, 2026 record, it reads A / Prime with a score of 80.4 at position 2, which makes it the second asset carrying our top letter alongside Bitcoin.
That is the headline of the week, and the pattern behind it is the more useful part: comparing those two dated records, every asset whose letter grade changed moved up a band. Not one letter moved down.
One honest qualification before the numbers. That is a comparison of two dated records, a week apart. It is not a running tally of every move in between, and an asset could have dipped and recovered inside that week without showing up here at all.
Aave, from B to A
Aave is a decentralized lending and borrowing protocol, which in plain terms means software that lets people deposit cryptoassets into shared pools to earn interest, and lets other people borrow from those pools by posting collateral of their own. AAVE is the protocol's governance token, the thing holders use to vote on decisions about the platform's direction.
What our two records say, each against its own date:
On our October 3, 2026 record: B, score 73.6, position 4.
On our October 10, 2026 record: A / Prime, score 80.4, position 2.
Bitcoin (BTC) reads A / Prime with a score of 87.2 at position 1 on both of those dates, unchanged. So on our October 10, 2026 record, two assets carry an A.
Our one line read on Aave, quoted word for word from the October 10, 2026 record: "Aave remains a leading DeFi lending asset with strong usage and moderate valuation caution."
And our standing assessment underneath it, also verbatim from that record, because an A in our framework is a judgement with edges rather than a seal of approval: "The supplied evidence continues to support Aave as a high-quality DeFi protocol with very strong live usage, durable category leadership, and limited near-term dilution risk. The main offset is valuation: market cap remains sizable relative to current protocol activity, while the record does not establish direct tokenholder fee capture or a clearly cheap peer-relative setup."
Two of the six dimension notes behind that, quoted from the same record. On usage: "Supplied data show very large live protocol activity: TVL is about $18.37B and 30-day fees are about $38.1M." TVL is total value locked, the amount of money sitting inside a protocol's contracts. On valuation: "Market cap is about $2.68B versus ~$18.37B TVL and ~$38.1M 30-day fees, but the supplied data do not establish token-holder cash-flow rights or a clean comparable multiple. Valuation looks non-cheap enough to cap the score at a low level."
That is our highest letter band and our own file saying, in the same breath, that it does not establish that holding the token captures the protocol's economics. Both sentences come out of the same record. A reader who sees only the letter gets one of them.
The letters that changed
Grouped by the band each asset moved into. Every figure is the pair of values our record carried on October 3 and on October 10, 2026.
Into B, our second highest band:
Kamino (KMNO), C at 41.6 to B / Sound at 71.2, position 8 on October 10
Morpho (MORPHO), C at 57.6 to B / Sound at 72.4
PancakeSwap (CAKE), C at 52.0 to B at 66.4, position 12 on October 10
Convex Finance (CVX), C at 56.0 to B at 66.0, position 13 on October 10
Maple Finance (SYRUP), C at 41.2 at position 47 to B at 63.2 at position 15
Out of F and into C:
OriginTrail (TRAC), F at 31.2 and unranked, to C at 42.8 at position 48
JUST (JST), F at 31.2 and unranked, to C at 40.0 at position 57
Geodnet (GEOD), F at 31.6 and unranked, to C at 41.6
Ethereum Name Service (ENS), F at 52.8 and unranked, to C at the same 52.8
Read that last one twice, because it is the clearest thing in the week. ENS carries an identical score on both dates and a different letter. Our framework runs pass or fail disqualifier gates on top of the weighted score, and a tripped gate places an asset in F at any score, including a score high enough for a higher band. An asset can therefore score well inside our C range and be graded F, which is exactly what our October 3, 2026 record says about ENS. The letter is not a label stuck on the score.
For reference, our published bands, from our own company profile: 80 and above is A, 60 to just under 80 is B, 40 to just under 60 is C, and below 40 is F, with the gate above overriding all four.
The top of the ranking reordered
Three movements worth naming, each one a position change our record accounts for by naming who crossed whom.
Ethereum (ETH) read B / Sound at 75.5 at position 2 on October 3, 2026 and reads B / Sound at 79.1 at position 3 on October 10, 2026. Its score rose 3.6 points and its position still fell one place, because Aave went past it.
Monero (XMR) read B / Sound at 60.1 at position 12 on October 3, 2026 and reads B / Sound at 72.5 at position 4 on October 10, 2026. A 12.4 point score move, eight positions, same letter on both dates.
Compound (COMP) read B / Sound at 60.8 at position 10 on October 3, 2026 and reads B / Sound at 69.6 at position 10 on October 10, 2026. An 8.8 point score move and the identical position, because the assets around it moved too.
And a fall, for symmetry: Chainlink (LINK) read B / Sound at 74.1 at position 3 on October 3, 2026 and reads B / Sound at 71.7 at position 7 on October 10, 2026. Our letter on Chainlink is the same on both dates.
What this week's record does not tell you
It does not tell you why any of it happened. Our published record carries the score, the letter, the position and the research notes for each asset on each date, and for a position change it names the other assets that crossed. It does not attach a cause to a score move, so this review does not supply one, and nothing above should be read as our account of why a number moved.
If what you want is the reason rather than the fact, log in to your free CryptoGrade account to learn more. The explanation behind a move is work in progress on our side, not something our framework is unable to reach.
Where to look
Our published ranking is at https://cryptograde.ai/tokens , and the framework that produces these scores and grades is written up at https://cryptograde.ai/framework .
Logged out, our site shows the top 10 crypto assets by our own score, which is our score and not market capitalization. A free account opens the rest of our ranking. Three of the graded assets in this review sit outside that top 10 on our October 10, 2026 record: PancakeSwap at B, 66.4, position 12; Convex Finance at B, 66.0, position 13; Maple Finance at B, 63.2, position 15.
The free account also opens Alerts, at https://cryptograde.ai/alerts . You pick the crypto assets you care about and ask to be told when our grade on one of them changes. It costs an email address.
One note on why the research is free for an email address. CryptoGrade does not work commercially with the assets or projects it covers, and it does not sell data. We are paid by nobody we grade, which is the only reason a review like this one can report an upgrade and our own valuation caution in the same paragraph.