Every score we publish comes from the same rules-based framework: six weighted dimensions, nine hard disqualifier gates, one letter grade. We write a lot about what that framework does. This issue is about what it deliberately doesn't do — because knowing the edges of a research tool is as useful as knowing what's inside it.
The six dimensions, and what's not among them
Our scoring covers: Tokenomics & Value Accrual, On-chain Usage & Economics, Security, Decentralization & Durability, Ecosystem & Moat, Relative Valuation, and Market Structure. Every one of those is about the asset itself — what it is, how it's used, how it's secured, how it's priced relative to comparable assets.
None of them is a read on:
Short-term price action. We don't chart momentum, support/resistance, or trading volume patterns. A grade tells you about the asset's fundamentals, not where its price is headed this week.
Narrative or sentiment. Hype cycles, influencer attention, and meme momentum move prices without moving any of our six dimensions. Our scoring doesn't track any of that.
Macro conditions. Interest-rate decisions, dollar strength, and broad risk-on/risk-off cycles move the entire crypto market together, independent of any individual asset's quality. That's outside our framework entirely.
Future roadmap promises. We score what's true about a project's tokenomics, usage, and security today — not what a team says it plans to ship. A stated roadmap isn't a scored input.
The nine gates, and what's not among them either
Our nine disqualifier gates check for things like an anonymous team, an unaudited contract, unsustainable yield, concentrated insider supply, and a handful of other hard-stop conditions — any one of which forces a grade to F regardless of the weighted score. They're a checklist for disqualifying red flags, not a general risk audit. A clean pass on all nine gates means none of those nine specific conditions was detected under our current rule version — it isn't a certification that nothing else could go wrong with the asset.
The boundary that matters most: research, not advice
This is the one worth being explicit about. CryptoGrade publishes crypto asset grades, scores, and the reasoning behind them — this is crypto research and ranking, not personalized financial guidance. We don't know your time horizon, your risk tolerance, your tax situation, your existing holdings, or anything else about your specific circumstances. A grade describes the asset, not your fit with it. That distinction is the one thing our framework was built around from the start, and it's why "what changed and why" is the shape of everything we publish, never "what to do about it."
Where this leaves you
Use a CryptoGrade grade for what it is: a structured, published read on an asset's fundamentals, sourced and dated. Pair it with your own judgment about timing, sizing, and fit — that part is yours, on purpose.
If you want the full mechanics behind a score, we've already written them up:
How CryptoGrade grades an asset: https://blog.cryptograde.ai/p/how-cryptograde-grades-an-asset
What the six dimensions actually measure: https://blog.cryptograde.ai/p/what-the-six-dimensions-actually-measure
One free step
If you haven't already, create a free CryptoGrade account at https://cryptograde.ai to see the full top-200 list of crypto assets, ranked by CryptoGrade's own score.
— The CryptoGrade team