Every asset CryptoGrade grades is scored on six weighted dimensions — Tokenomics & Value Accrual, On-chain Usage & Economics, Security, Decentralization & Durability, Ecosystem & Moat, Relative Valuation, and Market Structure. The framework page covers the weights and the mechanics. This piece is narrower: what does each of those six names actually mean?

A quick note before the list: these are plain-language explanations of what each category is generally asking — the kind of question a dimension with that name is built to answer. They are not a line-item disclosure of CryptoGrade's internal scoring inputs, which aren't published in this level of detail. If you want the published mechanics — weights, gates, provenance — the framework page is the source.

This is the biggest single weight, and the question underneath it is simple to state and hard to answer: if the network succeeds, does the token actually benefit? Plenty of tokens are bolted onto a project without a real mechanism connecting the two — usage can grow while the token itself has no claim on any of it. Tokenomics asks how supply, issuance, and any value-capture mechanism are designed, and whether that design gives the token a real relationship to the thing it's attached to, or just a name next to it.

The second-largest weight, and it's checking something different from the first: not how the token is designed, but whether anyone is actually using what it's attached to. Activity that happens on a public ledger — transactions, addresses, volume moving through a protocol — is observable in a way that sentiment isn't. This dimension is about separating real usage from attention: a project can be widely discussed while barely used, or quietly used while barely discussed.

This one asks whether the project can be broken, captured, or shut off. Code that hasn't been reviewed, control concentrated in a small number of hands, infrastructure that hasn't been tested under stress — these are the kinds of structural questions this category is built around. It's a different question from "is this a good idea" — it's "can something outside the project's control end it."

Whether a project has a durable position, or is one of a dozen interchangeable versions of the same idea. Developer activity, real integrations, and network effects that get stronger as more people participate are the kind of signal this category is asking about — as opposed to a project that could be forked and replaced with no real loss.

The name that most needs a plain-language caveat, so here it is directly: this is not a price target, a forecast, or a signal about where an asset's price is headed. What it's asking is how an asset is priced relative to comparable assets on the metrics in scope — a relative comparison, not a prediction. CryptoGrade publishes grades and the reasoning behind them; it does not tell any reader what to do with their money, and nothing about this dimension is an exception to that.

The smallest weight, and it's about how the asset actually trades: how deep the liquidity is, how many venues it's available on, whether the volume you see reflects real depth. A separate check elsewhere in the framework screens out assets with thin or wash-traded liquidity entirely — this dimension is the graded version of a related question, for assets that clear that bar.

None of these six categories is trying to answer "will this asset go up." Two ask about the token's design and its actual usage. One asks whether the project can be broken. One asks whether its position is defensible. One compares its pricing to peers. One asks how it trades. Put together, they're six different angles on the same underlying question: what would someone need to check, beyond the price on a chart, before forming a view on this asset?