Sky (Maker): defi protocols rating breakdown
CDP and savings · $5.95bn
The oldest continuously operating protocol in DeFi, and the one that has survived the most: it kept its stablecoin functioning through March 2020, when a collapsing market and congested chain produced zero-bid liquidation auctions and a hole in the system that governance then closed. Nine years, $5.95bn, and $27.52m of thirty-day fees.
The oldest continuously operating protocol in DeFi, and the one that has survived the most: it kept its stablecoin functioning through March 2020, when a collapsing market and congested chain produced zero-bid liquidation auctions and a hole in the system that governance then closed. Nine years, $5.95bn, and $27.52m of thirty-day fees.
How the score is built
Each criterion is scored 0–10 and weighted. The median column is the middle score across every entry in this ranking, so a row reads as a position rather than a number.
| Criterion | What we measured | Weight | Score | Category median | Rank | Weighted gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Who can change the contract holding your money | — | 32% | 6 | 6.5 | 5 of 8 | -0.16 |
| Track record, and who paid when it broke | — | 25% | 8 | 7.5 | 4 of 8 | +0.13 |
| Value secured | $5.95bn total value locked · sourced · 2026-08-27 · source$27.52m 30-day protocol fees · sourced · 2026-08-27 · source | 20% | 8 | 8.5 | 5 of 8 | -0.10 |
| Can an outsider verify it? | — | 13% | 6 | 8 | 7 of 8 | -0.26 |
| Chains and integration | — | 10% | 6 | 8 | 6 of 8 | -0.20 |
Measured 27 August 2026 · weights and method · decided by can an outsider verify it?, worth -0.26 points against the median
Who can change the contract holding your money: 6/10
Sourced to each protocol’s own documentation: are the contracts immutable, upgradeable behind a timelock, or upgradeable by a multisig that can act immediately. If there is an emergency power — a pause, a freeze, a guardian — we record who holds it and how fast they can use it. Uniswap’s pool contracts cannot be upgraded at all. Most of this page can be changed by a vote, and some of it by a handful of signers.
Scored 6 of 10 against a category median of 6.5, which places it 5th of 8 among defi protocols on this criterion. At a 32% weight that is 0.16 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 4.
Track record, and who paid when it broke: 8/10
Years of continuous operation holding real money, every incident with its date and amount, and whether users were made whole. Age alone is not evidence — plenty of protocols were old on the day they failed — but age combined with an unbroken record of not losing user funds is the strongest signal this category offers.
Scored 8 of 10 against a category median of 7.5, which places it 4th of 8 among defi protocols on this criterion. At a 25% weight that is 0.13 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 5.
Value secured: 8/10
Total value locked at a stated timestamp, and thirty days of protocol fees as evidence that the value is being used rather than parked. Scale matters here in a specific way: a protocol securing tens of billions has been a standing target for years and has not been taken.
Scored 8 of 10 against a category median of 8.5, which places it 5th of 8 among defi protocols on this criterion. At a 20% weight that is 0.10 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 5.
Can an outsider verify it?: 6/10
Open-source contracts, published audits, public parameter and risk documentation, and whether the numbers a front end shows can be independently recomputed from public data. A protocol that publishes the formula behind its yield is making a checkable claim; one that publishes only the number is not.
Scored 6 of 10 against a category median of 8, which places it 7th of 8 among defi protocols on this criterion. At a 13% weight that is 0.26 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 9, the worst 6.
Chains and integration: 6/10
Chains with real deployments, and how deeply the protocol is used as infrastructure by others, from public data at a stated timestamp.
Scored 6 of 10 against a category median of 8, which places it 6th of 8 among defi protocols on this criterion. At a 10% weight that is 0.20 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 4.
Other measurements
- years of continuous operation
- 9 SOURCED
Its nearest neighbours in this ranking
Incidents priced into this score
- 2020-03-12 — A 50% market fall and severe Ethereum congestion left liquidation auctions with no competing bids; some collateral was won for zero DAI, leaving roughly $4m of protocol debt. Governance covered the shortfall through an MKR auction. Affected vault owners were not compensated for collateral lost in the zero-bid auctions. [users made whole: no] [source]
Questions about this score
What happened to MakerDAO in March 2020?
+
The market fell about 50% and Ethereum congested to the point where liquidation bids could not get through. Some collateral auctions cleared at zero DAI — the collateral was taken for nothing — leaving roughly $4m of debt in the protocol, which governance covered by auctioning MKR. The system survived and the affected vault owners were not compensated for collateral lost in those auctions.
Is Sky still a crypto-backed system?
+
Decreasingly. A large and growing share of the collateral behind its stablecoins is tokenised real-world assets held through off-chain legal wrappers, whose custody and counterparties cannot be verified on-chain. The protocol that popularised verify-don't-trust now asks for a meaningful amount of trust in arrangements you cannot inspect.