Our Methodology Principles
CLEARFi Intelligence™ is built on the belief that intelligence should be inspectable. We do not ask you to trust a score without understanding how it was produced. Every scoring system on the platform follows the same three principles:
- Published, not proprietary-hidden. Every factor and weight in every score is documented on this page, in plain language, kept current with the platform.
- Deterministic and repeatable. Given the same inputs, our formulas produce the same score every time. There is no hidden randomness or manual override.
- Separates curated judgement from live data. Some inputs (tokenomics quality, team transparency) are research judgements made by CLEARFi analysts and updated periodically. Others (price, market cap, TVL) are live data recalculated on every visit. We are explicit about which is which within each score below.
Educational research, not financial advice. Every score, rating, and index on this page and throughout CLEARFi Intelligence™ is produced for educational and analytical purposes. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any asset. See our full Disclaimer.
CLEARFi Risk Score™
The Liquidity Depth factor is calculated on a logarithmic scale from live Total Value Locked: approximately $50M in TVL scores around 40, $1B scores around 75, and $10B or more scores around 95. This reflects that liquidity risk decreases non-linearly as depth increases.
The Yield Sustainability factor examines the live split between a protocol's base APY (from lending interest, trading fees, or other organic revenue) and its reward APY (from token emissions). A higher proportion of revenue-backed yield produces a higher sustainability score, because emission-backed yield is structurally dependent on continued token issuance and is more exposed to dilution risk.
Rating Scale
Yield Quality Score™
Yield Quality Score™ reuses the same five underlying factors as the CLEARFi Risk Score™ but reweights them specifically to answer the allocation question: not "is this protocol safe overall" but "will this specific yield still be here in six months." It weights sustainability and liquidity more heavily than the general Risk Score, because those two factors are the strongest predictors of yield durability. Used throughout Allocation Intelligence™ and the Model Portfolio Library™.
Opportunity Score™
Opportunity Score™ is the only one of our five scores that is time-sensitive by design — it is meant to answer "what deserves attention today," not "is this protocol fundamentally good." It combines the two upstream composite scores (Yield Quality and Risk) with live capital-flow and momentum signals so that a protocol which is fundamentally sound but currently seeing rapid TVL growth will rank higher than an equally sound protocol that is stagnant.
Rating Labels
CLEARFi Project Health Score™
The Market Structure factor is itself a composite of three live signals: distance from all-time high (a project trading more than 75% below its ATH is penalised, reflecting either a structural problem or a market that has lost confidence), market capitalisation rank (top-10 by market cap scores highest, reflecting broad market validation), and the ratio of 24-hour trading volume to market cap (a higher ratio indicates a more liquid, actively-traded market). These three sub-signals are weighted 35% / 40% / 25% respectively within the Market Structure factor.
Unlike the yield-side scores, five of the six Project Health Score™ factors are curated research judgements rather than live-computed values, because project fundamentals — team quality, tokenomics design, security posture — change on a research cycle, not a market-tick cycle. Curated factors are reviewed and updated periodically by CLEARFi analysts, not in real time.
Rating Scale
Conviction Score™
The ATH Opportunity factor is deliberately non-linear: a project trading 40–60% below its all-time high scores highest (a "significant discount" zone), because this reflects meaningful value dislocation without the extreme discount (80%+) that often signals structural rather than cyclical weakness. A project trading near its all-time high scores lowest on this factor, reflecting limited near-term upside room regardless of fundamental quality.
Conviction Score™ shares its Fundamentals sub-factor structure with the Project Health Score™ but is a distinct, purpose-built formula for the specific question of capital appreciation timing — powering Project Radar™'s discovery rankings and the five CLEARFi Digital Asset Indices™.
Rating Labels
Data Sources & Update Frequency
CLEARFi Intelligence™ combines two categories of input for every score:
- Live market data — price, market capitalisation, trading volume, total value locked, and all-time-high distance are fetched fresh on every platform session from public market data APIs. These figures update every time you load the platform.
- Curated research factors — tokenomics quality, team transparency, security posture, ecosystem strength, and similar judgement-based inputs are researched and scored by CLEARFi analysts. These are reviewed periodically, not recalculated in real time, because fundamental research does not change minute to minute.
Every score explicitly separates which of its inputs are live versus curated, as documented above for each scoring system.
Limitations & Research Scope
No scoring methodology, including ours, can fully capture the risk of any digital asset. We ask every user to understand these limitations clearly:
- Curated factors reflect CLEARFi's research judgement at the time of review and may not capture events that occur between review cycles.
- Live data is only as reliable as the public APIs it is sourced from, and can be delayed or temporarily unavailable during high market volatility.
- Our scores are relative rankings within the assets we track, not absolute guarantees of safety or performance.
- Digital asset markets carry inherent, substantial risk of loss regardless of any score or rating shown on this platform.
Questions about our methodology can be directed to research@clearfilabs.com.