Introducing the Yield Risk Score: A New Standard for Crypto Yield Products
Hacken introduced a new framework for assessing security, financial logic and systemic risk in crypto income products, providing investors with a verifiable measure of sustainability in volatile markets.
Hacken has introduced the Yield Risk Score (YRS), a standardized metric for evaluating crypto yield products. The framework evaluates protocols in terms of technical security, financial logic and dependency risk. This initiative aims to provide investors with a reliable tool to assess the risk profile of crypto return products.
According to a press release shared with crypto.news on November 10, the YRS assesses three dimensions: technical security, financial sustainability and systemic dependencies. The initiative follows the Hacken Trust Summit 2025 in New York, which brought together executives from Nasdaq, Moody’s, S&P Global, Citi, JPMorgan Chase and A100x to discuss the convergence of digital assets and traditional finance.
Addressing a $49 Billion Blind Spot in the Crypto Market
Hacken’s push for this new metric is a response to what the company calls a systemic failure that has cost investors billions. According to research, yield providers are the biggest source of failure in the crypto ecosystem, accounting for a staggering 55% of all industry losses. Their data shows that 330 different yield protocols have wiped out a total of $49 billion over the past five years, a trend highlighted by Stream Finance’s recent $93 million collapse.
“Hacken’s Yield Audit introduces a new layer of trust – one that retail investors can rely on to make informed decisions and that institutional investors need to meet due diligence standards,” the Hacken team said in the statement. To build this trust, the Yield Risk Score analyzes a project based on three critical aspects: security and infrastructure, financial sustainability, and dependencies and systemic risks.
How the Yield Risk Score Works
The first phase of the YRS focuses on security and infrastructure, evaluating custody solutions, smart contract integrity, and operational security to create a technical risk score. The second stage addresses financial sustainability and stress tests the economic logic and revenue sources to create a financial sustainability score. Finally, the framework examines dependencies and systemic risks and assesses vulnerabilities of oracles, cross-chain bridges and custodians to output a dependency risk score.
These three metrics are combined into a single, comprehensive YRS and reported on a well-known D-to-AAA scale. Beyond the score, Hacken provides continuous monitoring through its Extractor platform, allowing projects to maintain transparency without revealing proprietary strategies. Hacken’s work builds on a track record of setting standards that protect the broader crypto ecosystem, including pioneering Proof of Reserves audits for exchanges after FTX’s collapse.
For more information on the Yield Risk Score and its potential impact on the crypto market, visit https://crypto.news/hacken-creates-independent-metric-for-crypto-yields/
