Convex Finance: yield aggregators rating breakdown
Curve ecosystem, 4 chains
The most durable piece of infrastructure in this category: $568m locked, six years of operation, no exploit, and a genuinely useful function — it pools voting power so a small depositor gets boosted Curve rewards that would otherwise require locking a large position for years. The contracts have been immutable in the parts that matter, which is rarer here than it sounds.
The most durable piece of infrastructure in this category: $568m locked, six years of operation, no exploit, and a genuinely useful function — it pools voting power so a small depositor gets boosted Curve rewards that would otherwise require locking a large position for years.
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 moves your money, and what happened last time | none on record exploits · sourced · 2026-08-27 | 30% | 7 | 7 | 2 of 8 | 0.00 |
| Can you see what you actually own? | — | 22% | 8 | 7 | 3 of 8 | +0.22 |
| Size and survival | — | 20% | 9 | 6.5 | 3 of 8 | +0.50 |
| What they take | — | 18% | 6 | 6.5 | 5 of 8 | -0.09 |
| Chains and assets | 4 chains · sourced · 2026-08-27 · source | 10% | 5 | 7 | 7 of 8 | -0.20 |
Measured 27 August 2026 · weights and method · decided by size and survival, worth +0.50 points against the median
Who moves your money, and what happened last time: 7/10
Who can change a strategy, how fast, and whether a timelock or a multisig stands between a compromised key and your deposit. Then every incident on record with what happened to depositors: Yearn’s DAI vault lost about $11m to a price-manipulated Curve strategy in February 2021 and repaid users from the treasury; a misconfigured legacy contract cost roughly $10m more in April 2023, with no comparable make-whole. Same protocol, opposite outcomes.
Scored 7 of 10 against a category median of 7, which places it 2nd of 8 among yield aggregators on this criterion. At a 30% weight that is exactly level with the median of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 8, the worst 5.
Can you see what you actually own?: 8/10
Whether the current strategy and its underlying positions are published in a form a depositor can read, whether the advertised APY is net of fees, and whether historical performance is available rather than a trailing best number. A vault that shows a yield and not its composition is asking for trust it has not evidenced.
Scored 8 of 10 against a category median of 7, which places it 3rd of 8 among yield aggregators on this criterion. At a 22% weight that is 0.22 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 9, the worst 5.
Size and survival: 9/10
Total value locked at a stated timestamp, and how long the protocol has operated through full market cycles. In a category where the product is discretion, a long record is itself evidence.
Scored 9 of 10 against a category median of 6.5, which places it 3rd of 8 among yield aggregators on this criterion. At a 20% weight that is 0.50 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 4.
What they take: 6/10
Published performance and management fees, quoted from the protocol’s own documentation, and whether the displayed APY already has them deducted. Where a protocol’s fee schedule is not stated plainly in its own docs, that is recorded as a finding rather than estimated.
Scored 6 of 10 against a category median of 6.5, which places it 5th of 8 among yield aggregators on this criterion. At a 18% weight that is 0.09 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 9, the worst 5.
Chains and assets: 5/10
Chains with real deposits and the range of assets supported, from public data at a stated timestamp.
Scored 5 of 10 against a category median of 7, which places it 7th of 8 among yield aggregators 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 5.
Other measurements
Its nearest neighbours in this ranking
| # | Entry | Size and survival | How it differs |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pendle | 10 | Ahead by 1 on size and survival. |
| 2 | Spark Savings | 10 | Ahead by 1 on size and survival. |
| 4 | Yearn Finance | 6 | Behind by 3 on size and survival. |
| 5 | Beefy | 5 | Behind by 4 on size and survival. |
Questions about this score
What does Convex actually do for me?
+
It gives you Curve's boosted reward rate without requiring you to lock a large token position for years. Convex holds that locked position collectively and passes the boost to depositors, taking a share of the rewards for doing it. If you are not using Curve, there is nothing here for you.
What is the main risk in using Convex?
+
Concentration. Convex is a layer on top of Curve, so anything that damages Curve — the 2023 compiler-bug exploit being the obvious example — reaches Convex depositors too, and its own governance is concentrated in a way that has drawn sustained criticism. Six years without an exploit is real evidence; it is evidence about the layer, not about the foundation it sits on.