S&P Global Ratings Launches Onchain Lending Vault Risk Assessment

A rating agency applying a structured, letter-graded framework to onchain lending vaults is a notable step in treating these products as a distinct, assessable asset class rather than an undifferentiated slice of DeFi. The six dimensions — credit quality, liquidity mismatch, curator, blockchain, protocol, and vault security and governance — map onto the failure points that have actually mattered in this sector, and the explicit disclaimer that this is not a credit rating leaves room for the methodology to evolve. The open questions are whether the scores gain traction as a market reference and how the first published assessments diverge across vaults.