Trust Score Methodology

CoinGecko's Trust Score is comprised of seven key components:

Liquidity

Liquidity refers to how likely a crypto asset can be traded at a price that reflects its intrinsic value. 

Factors Influencing the Liquidity Score

Several factors contribute to an exchange’s liquidity score. These include:

1. Web Traffic & Reported volume
   We aggregate monthly web traffic statistics from SimilarWeb for all crypto exchanges that we track on CoinGecko monthly (usually during the middle of every month). We then divide the data by 30 to get the average daily traffic. Together with the daily reported trading volume information that we track, we derive the Average Daily User Trading Volume (ADUTV) for each exchange. We then derive a Normalized Exchange Total Trading Volume based on an internal benchmark. Exchanges with lower ADUTV compared to the benchmark will not have their reported trading volume normalized. However, for exchanges reporting ADUTV higher than the benchmark, we discard their ADUTV and multiply their SimilarWeb daily traffic estimate by the benchmark. If your exchange reports high trading volumes but has relatively low web traffic compared to the benchmark, your exchange may be penalized, resulting in a lower score.
   
2. Order book spread
   Depending on the order book spread of the exchange, a score will either be awarded or penalized. You may be penalized if you have many trading pairs with a high spread.
3. Trading Activity
   This assesses the overall activity across an exchange’s trading pairs. Exchanges with consistently high activity across multiple pairs will receive a higher score. Low activity or inactive pairs will result in a lower score.
4. Trust Score on Trading Pairs
   Each trading pair has its own Trust Score based on liquidity and order book depth. The Trust Scores of individual trading pairs contribute to the exchange’s overall liquidity score. Exchanges with trading pairs that have strong trust scores will result in a higher overall score.
   

Scale of Operations

Scale of Operations refers to parameters that can be measured directly through an exchange’s reported numbers, though they may not necessarily correlate with liquidity.

Factors Influencing the Scale of Operations Score

1. Normalized Trading Volume Percentile
   Exchanges that perform above average on these metrics may be awarded a higher score, while below-average performance will not be rewarded.
2. Normalized Order Book Depth Percentile
   Exchanges that perform above average on these metrics may be awarded a higher score, while below-average performance will not be rewarded.

Cybersecurity

The Cybersecurity Score is evaluated by Hacken via cer.live. Once you have verified with Hacken, your Cybersecurity Score should be reflected in 48 hours automatically on CoinGecko. For more information on Hacken Scoring, please refer to this article. 

API Coverage

We measure the completeness of an exchange API for the following criteria:

1. Tickers Data
2. Historical Trades Data
3. Order Book Data
4. Candlestick/OHLC
5. WebSocket API
6. API Trading
7. Public Documentation

Please provide the relevant endpoint and submit a request for our verification.

Team Presence

Team Presence evaluates the transparency and public availability of the exchange’s senior leadership.

Past Incidents

Past incidents refer to whether an exchange has experienced security or functional issues that can potentially affect a user's fund safety.

Exchanges may be re-awarded with score after 12 months have passed since the incident and be able to provide publicly available proof that user funds were protected or refunded. However, this will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

Proof of Reserves

Proof of Reserves (PoR) considers the availability of declared assets that can be publicly assessed, user-attestation processes as well as financial audits. For more information, refer to our article on Proof of Reserves.

Exchanges can verify their Proof of Reserves via DefiLlama. Once its verified on DefiLlama, please submit a request for our further verification.

Further Reading

• Trust Score
• Trust Score Explained
• Trust Score 2.0
• Cybersecurity Update
• Proof of Reserves

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To maintain the integrity of the Trust Score, we are unable to provide additional details beyond what is outlined above. Sharing specific thresholds or metric breakdowns could lead to exchanges attempting to manipulate their scores, compromising the reliability of the Trust Score for users.