Is Your DeFi Protocol Safe? All 100 Risk Ratings, Ranked (July 2026)

"Is Aave safe?" "Is Ethena legit?" "Can I trust this new protocol with my stablecoins?" These are the most-asked questions in DeFi — and the answers you'll find are usually useless. Reddit says "DYOR." The protocol's own docs say "audited by leading firms." Influencers say whatever they're paid to say.

We built DeFi Sentinel to answer that question with a number instead of a vibe. This page is the full answer: every one of the 100 protocols we rate, ranked from safest to riskiest, with the exact score behind each verdict. Each name links to the full rating page — the score breakdown, audits, admin-control analysis, and risk alerts behind the headline number.

Ratings below are as of July 5, 2026. Scores are recalculated on a rolling basis, so the linked protocol pages are always the source of truth — this table is the snapshot, the pages are live.

How to read the ratings

We use a credit-style letter scale mapped to a 0-100 safety score. Higher is safer:

Rating	Score	What it means in practice
AAA	90-100	Highest safety tier — battle-tested, deep audit coverage, no structural red flags. The protocols we'd use as core positions.
AA	80-89	Very safe — minor open risks, nothing structural.
A	70-79	Generally safe with moderate caveats worth reading before depositing.
BBB	65-69	Acceptable for risk-tolerant users; the caveats are real.
BB	60-64	Elevated risk — due diligence is mandatory, size positions accordingly.
B	55-59	High risk — suitable only for small, actively-monitored allocations.
C	Below 55	Speculative — material unresolved risks. We would not deposit.

The score is computed across five weighted risk dimensions: Smart Contract & Technical Risk (30%), Economic Design & Market Risk (25%), Governance & Centralization Risk (20%), Sustainability & Competitive Position (15%), and Reputation & Social Trust (10%). Every subfield is scored against documented criteria — audit count and severity, time-in-market, TVL quality, oracle dependencies, admin-key controls, treasury runway, team track record. The full rubric is public: read how we rate DeFi protocols if you want to see exactly where the points come from.

Two things the scale is not: it is not a price prediction, and it is not an endorsement. It is an estimate of the risk of losing deposited funds to exploit, design failure, or operator misconduct.

The full ranking — all 100 rated protocols

A note on scope before you scroll. The rating universe is drawn from the top DeFi protocols by on-chain TVL as tracked by DefiLlama. That cutoff deliberately excludes two kinds of projects: protocols whose TVL sits substantially off-chain (custodial or RWA structures DefiLlama's on-chain accounting doesn't capture), and risk curators / vault managers that allocate capital through other protocols rather than operating one — useful services, but not technically DeFi protocols in their own right. The list is not static: as new protocols are rated and TVL rankings shift, entries will be added and re-ranked.

#	Protocol	Category	Rating	Safety score
1	Uniswap	DEX	AAA	100
2	Jito	Liquid Staking	AAA	97
3	Lido	Liquid Staking	AAA	97
4	Polymarket	Prediction Market	AAA	96
5	Liquity	CDP	AAA	95
6	Aave	Lending	AAA	95
7	Jupiter	Dex Aggregator	AAA	95
8	PancakeSwap	DEX	AAA	94
9	Spark	Lending	AAA	94
10	Sky Protocol	CDP	AAA	94
11	Pendle Finance	Yield	AAA	94
12	Morpho	Lending	AAA	93
13	Marinade	Liquid Staking	AAA	93
14	Compound Finance	Lending	AAA	93
15	Orca	DEX	AAA	92
16	Origin Ether	Liquid Staking	AAA	91
17	Ethena	Stablecoin	AAA	91
18	Babylon Protocol	Staking	AAA	91
19	SSV Network	Staking	AAA	91
20	Reserve Protocol	Indexes	AAA	90
21	Aerodrome	DEX	AAA	90
22	Lightning Network	Bridge	AAA	90
23	Kamino Finance	Lending	AAA	90
24	Curve Finance	DEX	AA	89
25	Frax Finance	Stablecoin	AA	89
26	Maple Finance	Lending	AA	88
27	DeFi Saver	CDP	AA	88
28	Rocket Pool	Liquid Staking	AA	87
29	Raydium	DEX	AA	87
30	Cooler Loans	Lending	AA	86
31	Fluid	Lending	AA	86
32	Obol	Staking	AA	86
33	stake.link	Liquid Staking	AA	86
34	Lombard	Liquid Staking	AA	86
35	Metronome Synth	CDP	AA	85
36	Euler	Lending	AA	85
37	Derive	DEX	AA	85
38	ether.fi	Liquid Staking	AA	85
39	Meteora	DEX	AA	85
40	AUTOfinance	Yield	AA	85
41	Enzyme Finance	Yield	AA	84
42	Lazy Summer Protocol	Yield	AA	83
43	StakeWise	Liquid Staking	AA	83
44	Portal	Bridge	AA	83
45	Project 0	Lending	AA	83
46	Axelar	Bridge	AA	83
47	Threshold Network	Bridge	AA	83
48	Hyperlane	Bridge	AA	83
49	Symbiotic	Staking	AA	82
50	Yearn Finance	Yield	AA	82
51	Venus Protocol	Lending	AA	82
52	GMX	DEX	AA	82
53	EigenLayer	Staking	AA	82
54	f(x) Protocol	Stablecoin	AA	82
55	marginfi	Lending	AA	81
56	Beefy	Yield	AA	81
57	Convex Finance	Yield	AA	81
58	Benqi	Liquid Staking	AA	81
59	Dolomite	Lending	AA	80
60	mETH Protocol	Liquid Staking	A	79
61	Liquid Collective	Liquid Staking	A	79
62	USD.AI	RWA	A	79
63	Lista DAO	Lending	A	78
64	Hyperliquid	DEX	A	78
65	Sanctum	Liquid Staking	A	78
66	Balancer	DEX	A	78
67	Valantis	Liquid Staking	A	78
68	QuickSwap	DEX	A	76
69	Across Protocol	Bridge	A	76
70	Kinetiq	Liquid Staking	A	75
71	dYdX	DEX	A	75
72	Cap	Lending	A	74
73	Stader Labs	Liquid Staking	A	72
74	Tornado Cash	Privacy	A	72
75	Bedrock	Liquid Staking	A	71
76	CIAN	Yield	A	71
77	Tonstakers	Liquid Staking	BBB	69
78	JustLend DAO	Lending	BBB	69
79	Moonwell	Lending	BBB	69
80	KernelDAO	Staking	BBB	68
81	BounceBit	RWA	BBB	67
82	PumpSwap	DEX	BBB	66
83	Allbridge	Bridge	BBB	66
84	Re	RWA	BBB	65
85	Solstice	Stablecoin	BB	64
86	HyperLend	Lending	BB	64
87	Apyx	RWA	BB	64
88	Aster	DEX	BB	64
89	b14g	Staking	BB	63
90	Avalon Finance	CDP	BB	63
91	Pump.fun	DEX	BB	61
92	DoubleZero	Liquid Staking	BB	61
93	Hastra	RWA	BB	61
94	Falcon Finance	Stablecoin	B	59
95	Drift	DEX	B	59
96	BitFi	Stablecoin	C	49
97	Dswap	DEX	C	46
98	AFI Protocol	RWA	C	43
99	Buzz (B² Network Farming)	Yield	C	34
100	Saturn	RWA	C	34

The safest protocol in each category

If you already know what you want to do and just need the safest venue to do it:

• Lending — Aave (AAA, 95) leads, with Spark (AAA, 94) and Morpho (AAA, 93) close behind. Lending is DeFi's most mature category and it shows.
• DEX — Uniswap (AAA, 100) is the only perfect score on the board: immutable core contracts, nine years of battle-testing, no admin keys over user funds. PancakeSwap (AAA, 94) and Orca (AAA, 92) lead their chains.
• Liquid staking — Jito and Lido tie at AAA 97; Marinade (AAA, 93) rounds out the Solana picture.
• Stablecoins — Ethena (AAA, 91) scores highest of the issuers we rate, with Frax (AA, 89) behind it. If stablecoin risk is your concern, read our stablecoin depeg explainer — the failure modes are more varied than most holders think.
• CDP — Liquity (AAA, 95), the most governance-minimized design in the category, then Sky Protocol (AAA, 94).
• Prediction markets — Polymarket (AAA, 96).
• Yield — Pendle Finance (AAA, 94) by a comfortable margin.

How to actually use this table

Compare within a category, not across it. A 90 lending market and a 90 bridge are not the same bet — bridges carry structurally different (and historically nastier) failure modes. The score already prices some of that in, but your first filter should always be "what does this protocol do", and only then "how safely does it do it".

Mind the cliff below 65. The distribution is top-heavy — 23 protocols rate AAA and 36 rate AA — because we mostly rate protocols worth rating. The gap between an 80 and a 60 is much bigger than twenty points suggests: BB and below means we found concrete, unresolved issues, not just "less history". Read the risk alerts on those pages before depositing anything you can't lose.

A C is a verdict. Five protocols currently rate C. Two of them score 34. Those pages document exactly why — typically some combination of unaudited contracts, concentrated admin control, unsustainable economics, or opaque teams. If you hold positions there, the rating page is worth five minutes of your time today.

Ratings move. A protocol that ships a major upgrade, suffers an incident, or decentralizes its admin keys gets re-scored. The "last updated" date on each protocol page tells you how fresh the verdict is. High-stakes positions deserve a quarterly re-check — or just watch the protocols directory, which always reflects the current scores.

What a high rating does not mean

No rating eliminates risk, and it's worth being precise about what residual risk looks like even at AAA:

• Novel exploits. Audits catch known bug classes. They cannot prove the absence of a bug nobody has thought of yet. Battle-testing (years × TVL) is the best proxy we have, and it's weighted heavily — but it is a proxy.
• External contagion. A protocol can be internally sound and still get hurt by a depegged collateral asset, a failed oracle, or a counterparty. Our scores account for these dependencies, but a fast-moving crisis can outrun any static analysis.
• Your own operational risk. Approvals to malicious contracts, phishing, seed-phrase loss — the leading cause of individual DeFi losses isn't protocol failure at all.

The flip side also matters: a new protocol isn't automatically unsafe, and an old one isn't automatically safe. The risk curve in DeFi is stranger than intuition suggests — we wrote up how team incentives around token launches bend it in how to spot a good DeFi protocol.

The bottom line

Before you deposit into any DeFi protocol: find it in the table above, click through, and read two things — the score breakdown and the risk alerts. It takes three minutes and it's the highest-value three minutes in DeFi due diligence. If the protocol you're considering isn't on the list yet, that absence is itself information: it hasn't been through the rubric, so treat it as unrated risk, not hidden safety.

This article is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice. Ratings estimate protocol risk; they do not guarantee safety or returns. Always do your own research and never deposit more than you can afford to lose.