Venus: lending platforms rating breakdown
BNB Chain and 7 others
It is here because its history is the clearest illustration of how a lending market actually breaks. Nobody exploited a Venus contract in May 2021: the price of its own governance token went from $76 to $143 and back inside six hours, somebody borrowed thousands of BTC and ETH against it at the top, and the protocol was left carrying nine figures of bad debt when the price returned.
It is here because its history is the clearest illustration of how a lending market actually breaks. Nobody exploited a Venus contract in May 2021: the price of its own governance token went from $76 to $143 and back inside six hours, somebody borrowed thousands of BTC and ETH against it at the top, and the protocol was left carrying…
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Incidents, bad debt, and who ate it | none bad debt recovered from the 2021 event · sourced · 2026-08-27 | 32% | 3 | 6.5 | 10 of 10 | -1.12 |
| What the market actually earns | 0.9 gross yield per dollar deposited · computed · 2026-08-27 · source | 22% | 3 | 7.5 | 9 of 10 | -0.99 |
| Scale and the ability to exit | $1.29bn total value locked · sourced · 2026-08-27 · source | 22% | 6 | 7 | 8 of 10 | -0.22 |
| Risk architecture | — | 14% | 5 | 7 | 8 of 10 | -0.28 |
| Chains and assets | — | 10% | 6 | 6 | 5 of 10 | 0.00 |
Measured 27 August 2026 · weights and method · decided by incidents, bad debt, and who ate it, worth -1.12 points against the median
Incidents, bad debt, and who ate it: 3/10
Every exploit and every bad-debt event with dates and amounts, and then the question that decides whether it matters: were depositors made whole, and by whom. Euler lost $197m in March 2023 and returned 100% of it after negotiating with the attacker. Venus carried nine figures of bad debt from a single oracle manipulation in 2021. Those are opposite outcomes from superficially similar headlines, and a rating that treats "has been hacked" as one fact is useless.
Scored 3 of 10 against a category median of 6.5, which places it 10th of 10 among lending platforms on this criterion. At a 32% weight that is 1.12 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 9, the worst 3.
What the market actually earns: 3/10
Computed by us: thirty days of protocol fees, annualised, divided by total value locked. That is the gross interest the market genuinely generated per dollar deposited — before the protocol’s cut and before incentives. It is the honest version of the APY a front end shows you, and it separates a market where borrowers are really paying from one where the TVL headline is parked capital earning close to nothing.
Scored 3 of 10 against a category median of 7.5, which places it 9th of 10 among lending platforms on this criterion. At a 22% weight that is 0.99 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 1.
Scale and the ability to exit: 6/10
Total value locked at a stated timestamp, and whether the market is deep enough that a withdrawal at size does not itself move the utilisation rate. In lending, depth is not a convenience — a market that is 99% utilised cannot pay you out until somebody repays.
Scored 6 of 10 against a category median of 7, which places it 8th of 10 among lending platforms on this criterion. At a 22% weight that is 0.22 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 4.
Risk architecture: 5/10
Sourced to documentation: are markets isolated or pooled, what oracle secures each collateral, who can change a listing or a loan-to-value ratio and how fast, and — for the newer curated-vault designs — who exactly is picking your risk and whether they carry any of it. A single shared pool means one bad listing can impair everyone.
Scored 5 of 10 against a category median of 7, which places it 8th of 10 among lending platforms on this criterion. At a 14% weight that is 0.28 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 8, the worst 3.
Chains and assets: 6/10
Deployments with real deposits, not deployment count. A protocol on forty chains with liquidity on three is scored on the three.
Scored 6 of 10 against a category median of 6, which places it 5th of 10 among lending platforms on this criterion. At a 10% weight that is exactly level with the median of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 1.
Its nearest neighbours in this ranking
Incidents priced into this score
- 2021-05-18 — The oracle-reported price of XVS, Venus’s own governance token, rose from about $76 to $143 and fell back within six hours. Loans of roughly 2,000 BTC and 5,700 ETH were taken against XVS collateral at the peak, triggering more than $200m of liquidations and leaving over $100m of bad debt that was never recovered. [users made whole: no] [source]
Questions about this score
Was Venus hacked?
+
No, and that is the point. In May 2021 the oracle price of its own governance token moved from about $76 to $143 and back inside six hours, someone borrowed thousands of BTC and ETH against that collateral at the peak, and the protocol was left holding more than $100m of bad debt when the price returned. Every contract behaved exactly as written. A lending market can be destroyed by the price feed it trusts without a single line of code failing.
Was the Venus bad debt ever recovered?
+
No. More than $100m from the 2021 event was never recovered, and a further oracle-manipulation loss in 2025 added roughly $2m. Venus does publish its bad-debt positions, which is more transparency than several competitors offer — but publishing a hole is not the same as filling it.