Methodology

RWABeat asks what a lender or curator asks before accepting a tokenized real-world asset: what can go wrong, how much would I lose, and how fast can I get out? Every rating on the site maps back to this page. It is versioned in Git; every change is listed in the changelog.

Principles

1. No single score. You see all seven ratings and the stage, so you can tell exactly which part is weak.
2. Asset-class aware. A T-bill fund and a private credit pool aren't held to the same freshness bar.
3. Unknown is its own state. If a fact isn't public, the rating says "unverified" rather than guessing.
4. Every rating has evidence. Each check links to the document, contract or onchain data behind it.
5. Disclosure constraints are context, not a penalty. Data kept private for a real legal reason is shown as such.
6. Green doesn't mean safe. Each category describes one kind of risk, not overall quality.
7. Independence. No issuer pays for a listing or a rating. Issuers may challenge a rating with evidence.

Scope

v1 covers tokenized Treasury and private-credit assets on EVM chains. Stablecoins, tokenized stocks and non-EVM chains come later.

Data

Asset value (AUM) comes from DefiLlama, with attribution, cross-checked against totalSupply × price.

Ratings

Each category runs a set of checks. A known red check makes the category red. Otherwise, if a check couldn't be made because the fact isn't public, and the answer could make things worse, the category is unverified, shown with the worst color we could confirm ("unverified, at least yellow"). Legal Claim is not assessed until a legal reviewer joins.

Some checks depend on the asset type. Data and prices have to be at least this fresh:

Underlying Asset

• Green: at least 95% government debt, government repo or cash, and short-dated (weighted average maturity of a year or less; a fund holding only bills, repo and cash qualifies).
• Yellow: private credit that is investment grade or mostly senior secured, spread across borrowers, with a year of history.
• Red: the largest borrower is over 20% of the pool or there are fewer than 10 borrowers; mostly unsecured, sub-investment-grade loans; less than a year of history; or losses passed to holders in the last three years.

Legal Claim

Not assessed yet. It will check the structure (regulated fund, bankruptcy-remote SPV or direct issuer liability), what the token legally is, whether it is the official ownership record, the jurisdiction, an independent trustee or board, and regulatory status. The Legal tab shows the public records in the meantime.

Counterparties

• Green: an independent, regulated custodian and administrator, a recognized auditor (Big Four, PCAOB-registered, or a major international network), and no single point of failure.
• Yellow: an unregulated custodian or administrator, a small auditor, one firm acting as both custodian and administrator, a single settlement rail (for example USDC only), or another company the product can't run without.
• Red: the issuer's own group holds or administers the assets, there is no audit, or the custodian or administrator isn't disclosed.

Control

We read every privileged power from chain, follow proxy admins, timelocks and controlling contracts down to the account that signs, and take the weakest holder of each power. Critical powers are upgrade, mint, force-transfer, burn from a holder, set price, allocate (move the backing assets) and granting roles. High powers are freeze, pause and changing compliance rules.

• Red: a single key (an EOA, an unrecognized contract, or a 1-of-n multisig) holds a critical power or can freeze; there is no published audit; or a contract's source isn't verified.
• Yellow: a single key can pause or change compliance rules; a critical power sits with a multisig that has no timelock or few required signers; a Safe module can bypass the signers; admin powers aren't documented by the issuer; the latest audit is over two years old; or the token depends on a bridge on some chain.
• Green: powers limited and documented, held by independent multisigs behind a timelock, and recently audited.

For regulated securities, freeze and force-transfer are often legally required. We rate who holds them and what checks exist, not whether they exist. Privileged functions no handler recognizes are listed for manual review and don't change the rating.

Transparency

We rate the best public report on four ladders: who the data comes from (issuer, administrator, custodian, independent firm), how detailed it is (a single NAV, a breakdown, every position), how fresh it is for the asset type, and how it can be verified (self-reported, attestation, audit, cryptographic).

• Green: data from a third party, every position, fresh enough, and at least attested.
• Yellow: a third-party attestation or audit, but only aggregate numbers, data from the issuer itself, or updates too slow for the asset.
• Red: self-reported only, or no meaningful disclosure.

Onchain data is a separate badge, not part of the rating: data published onchain helps automation, but public offchain data is still transparent to a person. Ladders adapted from Chronicle Labs, "The Transparency Gap in Onchain Finance" (Oct 2026).

Pricing

• Red: no NAV feed (a stable token is then simply assumed to be worth $1); a single key writes the price or can write a vault's NAV down; updates slower than the asset's freshness bar; a feed older than three times its cadence; or consumers can't tell when the price is stale.
• Yellow: NAV published by the issuer with no independent check, an issuer multisig publishing the price, write-downs reaching the price late, a traded token whose discount to NAV isn't tracked or has exceeded 2%, or a lending market hardcoding $1.
• Green: NAV from an independent administrator or custodian, delivered by an oracle with visible staleness, and losses reflected promptly.

Funds that strike NAV on business days only don't count weekends towards the price's age.

Exit

• Red: redemptions can be suspended at the issuer's discretion; settlement takes more than five business days; redemptions only run monthly or quarterly; a notice period over a week; a lock-up; liquidators can't legally hold the token; or no redemption and no market.
• Yellow: redemption for allowlisted holders only, settlement in two to five days, weekly dealing, a daily cap, liquidators limited to an allowlist, or no instant path that can take $5M.
• Green: redemption in a day or less with no discretionary gates, a real instant path (a $5M DEX sell within 1% of NAV, or an instant redemption facility that can pay $5M today), and any liquidator can hold the token.

For a curator, the real liquidation window is the exit time, not a few minutes. A rough rule: max LTV ≈ 1 − (worst price drop during the exit time + slippage + liquidation bonus).

Stages

Stages answer one question: how much do you have to trust the issuer? Each builds on the last.

• Stage 0, Disclosed: what the token holds is described publicly; the issuer, custodian, administrator and auditor are named; the legal structure is documented; smart contracts are verified.
• Stage 1, Protected: a bankruptcy-remote structure; an independent custodian and administrator; holdings independently verified at a pace that fits the asset; admin powers held by a multisig with a documented policy; a documented redemption path.
• Stage 2, Trust-minimized: an independent trustee; holdings data anyone can verify; admin changes behind a timelock so holders can exit first; an exit that works without the issuer and lets liquidators hold the token; pricing from an independent source.

Bankruptcy remoteness and the trustee are legal checks. Until they're assessed, no asset can pass Stage 0, and the asset page says when an asset is held back only by them.

DeFi exposure

For each asset we list the lending markets that accept it as collateral (Morpho first, then Aave including Horizon, then Euler) with loan asset, LLTV, the oracle used, collateral supplied and amount borrowed. Markets whose oracle hardcodes the price are flagged.

Alerts

We watch every contract in the discovery snapshots. Upgrades, admin changes and critical role changes are critical. Safe signer or threshold changes, scheduled timelock calls, pauses and stale oracles are high. Freezes, seizures, and mints or burns above 1% of supply or $5M are medium. Every alert re-runs discovery for that asset.

Disclaimer

RWABeat ratings are for information only. They are not investment, legal, tax, or financial advice, not a credit rating, and not an endorsement of any asset. Data may be incomplete or wrong; always verify with the linked primary sources. Each category describes one kind of risk and does not indicate overall safety.