EDITORIAL · 8 PIECES

The work behind the ratings.

Investigations, methodology notes and analysis from the editorial bench.

investigation · 14 MIN
How NovaPlay drained itself

Forty-two days from Certified to Removed. The full reconstruction of the largest GameFi treasury event of 2026 — what the audit missed, what the docs misrepresented, and what the team did in the 96 hours after the transactions.

Riya Patel · May 22, 2026
methodology · 11 MIN
Methodology v3.2 — what changed and why

The Q2 2026 methodology update adds a KYC sub-criterion weight, clarifies how anonymous-team projects are scored, and revises the audit recency window. Here's the full diff with rationale.

Marisol Chen · Apr 4, 2026
analysis · 9 MIN
Liquid staking concentration · the 2026 picture

Lido's share of staked ETH has plateaued at 28% — below the 33% threshold that has dominated the discourse. But the operator-level concentration story is different and worth looking at closely.

Yusuf Karim · May 8, 2026
methodology · 12 MIN
How we rate AI agent protocols

The AI agents category requires a different evidence base than DeFi. Here's how methodology v3.2 handles it — and what we learned from the first 24 ratings.

Tomás Reyes · Apr 22, 2026
quarterly-report · 8 MIN
Q1 2026 in review · what we shipped, what we missed

312 applications received, 187 accepted, 14 removed for cause. Plus three methodology gaps we surfaced this quarter that informed v3.2.

Marisol Chen · Apr 14, 2026
analysis · 7 MIN
Telegram apps · evaluating a new category

Hamster Kombat reached 240M players. Notcoin moved 35M wallets on-chain. The Telegram-native category needs different evaluation criteria than DeFi or GameFi. Here's our working framework.

Riya Patel · Apr 30, 2026
op-ed · 6 MIN
We turn away most provider applicants. Here's why.

Of 232 providers who applied to the Onyx marketplace since 2024, we accepted 51. The other 181 were declined. The pattern in the rejections is the most useful artifact we've produced this year.

Marisol Chen · May 2, 2026
analysis · 10 MIN
EigenLayer · 18 months in

Restaking went from a thesis to a $14B category. Onyx's 18-month review of EigenLayer's operational track record, AVS slashing events, and the unsolved questions.

Yusuf Karim · May 12, 2026