Hacken creates independent metric for crypto yields

Hacken introduced a new framework to assess security, financial logic, and systemic risk across crypto yield products, providing investors with a verifiable gauge of sustainability in volatile markets.
Summary

• Hacken launched the Yield Risk Score, a standardized metric for assessing crypto yield products.
• The framework evaluates protocols across technical security, financial logic, and dependency risk.

According to a press release shared with crypto.news on Nov. 10, Hacken has introduced a new framework designed to evaluate the risk profile of crypto yield products. The Yield Risk Score, or 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 leaders from Nasdaq, Moody’s, S&P Global, Citi, JPMorgan Chase, and A100x to discuss the convergence of digital assets and traditional finance.

Hacken positions the YRS as the first standardized metric allowing investors to gauge the safety and stability of yield-generating crypto protocols in a market still prone to high-profile failures.

How Hacken’s YRS addresses a $49 billion blind spot

Hacken’s push for this new metric is a response to what the firm terms a systemic failure that has cost investors billions. According to its own research, yield providers are the single most significant point of failure in the crypto ecosystem, accounting for a staggering 55% of all industry losses.

Their data indicates that 330 different yield protocols have collectively vaporized $49 billion over the past five years, a trend underscored by the recent $93 million collapse of Stream Finance.

“Hacken’s Yield Audit introduces a new trusted layer — one that retail investors can rely on to make informed decisions and that institutional investors require to meet due-diligence standards,” the Hacken team said in the statement.

To build that trust, the Yield Risk Score dissects a project across three critical fronts. The first stage focuses on Security and Infrastructure, evaluating custody solutions, smart contract integrity, and operational security to produce a Technical Risk Score.

The second stage delves into Financial Sustainability, stress-testing the economic logic and yield sources to generate a Financial Sustainability Score. Finally, the framework examines Dependency and Systemic Risk, assessing vulnerabilities from oracles, cross-chain bridges, and custodians to output a Dependency Risk Score.

These three metrics are combined into a single, comprehensive YRS, reported on a familiar D-to-AAA scale. Beyond the score, Hacken provides continuous monitoring through its Extractor platform, allowing projects to maintain transparency without disclosing proprietary strategies.

Hacken’s work builds on a track record of setting standards that protect the broader crypto ecosystem. After the collapse of FTX, the firm pioneered Proof of Reserves audits for exchanges, a practice now adopted by over 50 platforms to verify on-chain holdings.