Structured Products evaluated across payoff defined in a readable contract, counterparty backing the payoff, fee embedded in the quote, and settlement and early exit terms.
SO
#1 of 7 · published ranking
SOFA.org (Earn and Surge)
82ChainChoice Score
4199
Why it leads
Best in the pool on counterparty backing and embedded fee disclosure
Cost
Not priced· No comparable price is published
No provider can pay for a position in this table. The code that computes this order cannot read which links earn us a commission, and every build proves it. Every score below rebuilds from the published criteria.Ranking 2026.08 · 4 criteria · 7 products · same inputs, same order
Personal comparison
Structured Products ranked comparison
No comparable price is published; ranking still uses verified product evidence.
RankProviderBest fitScore
1
SOSOFA.org (Earn and Surge)Market-maker quoted Rangebound and Tren...Top ranked
Fee embedded in the quote — 10/10Trade-off: The 15% and 5% rates are not immutable, and the key that can change them is one key o...
Commission: This provider pays ChainChoice nothing for this link. Disclosure
Crypto products are high risk. Check the provider is authorised where you live before you deposit.
1 more assessed and ranked below — none of them hidden for commercial reasons.
Ranking blindCommercial terms excludedDated primary sourcesCrypto products are high risk. Check the provider is authorised where you live before you deposit.
Ranked on 4 published criteria weighted 30/28/24/18, which set goal alignment — 30 of the 86 points. The rest: regional access 20, evidence depth 18, ease of use 10, institutional trust 8. Profile match is shown in breakdowns but carries no weight.
Audit
Infrastructure
Methodology
2026.09.15
published 2026-09-16
Providers tracked
980+
across 119 categories
Last verified
2026-08-11
newest dated pricing or sentiment read
Named on the roster
2 people
managing directors · 6 automated processes
Decision guide
What matters most before choosing in this category
Weighted on whether the payoff is defined in a contract you can read (30), who actually owes it if it triggers (28), what the quote hides in fees (24), and how settlement and early exit work (18). A structured product is a promise about a future payment, so the only two questions that matter are what exactly was promised and who is standing behind it — and only three of the seven here let a buyer answer the second. The category is also much smaller than it looks: the seven providers together hold $24,215,717 of DefiLlama TVL read on 2026-08-07, of which 60.5% is one venue's perpetuals collateral rather than structured-product notional. Cega, Ribbon Earn, Exotic Markets, SuperHedge, Struct Finance, Smilee and BracketX have all sunset or pivoted.
What matters most before choosing in this category
Weighted on whether the payoff is defined in a contract you can read (30), who actually owes it if it triggers (28), what the quote hides in fees (24), and how settlement and early exit work (18). A structured product is a promise about a future payment, so the only two questions that matter are what exactly was promised and who is standing behind it — and only three of the seven here let a buyer answer the second. The category is also much smaller than it looks: the seven providers together hold $24,215,717 of DefiLlama TVL read on 2026-08-07, of which 60.5% is one venue's perpetuals collateral rather than structured-product notional. Cega, Ribbon Earn, Exotic Markets, SuperHedge, Struct Finance, Smilee and BracketX have all sunset or pivoted.
Where is the payoff written down — in a contract you can read, or in a marketing table?
If the payoff triggers in your favour, whose money pays it, and can you size that pot?
What does the quoted price already contain, and what gets taken again at settlement?
Current editor lead
Expert review and scoring weights
SO
SOFA.org (Earn and Surge)Data checked Aug 2026
Market-maker quoted Rangebound and Trend notes settled from ERC-1155 position tokens, in principal-protected Earn and full-risk Surge formats.
Market-maker quoted Rangebound and Trend notes settled from ERC-1155 position tokens, in principal-protected Earn and full-risk Surge formats. Strongest on fee embedded in the quote (10/10): The documented 15% premium fee and 5% upside settlement fee are confirmed by eth_call on 2026-08-07 on every chain SOFA deploys to, not just three. FeeCollector 0x4140AB4AFc36B93270a9659BD8387660cC6509b5 on Ethereum (block 25705369), 0x4Bd6bE959897631fbE5a8Aae01707219850e032f on Arbitrum (block 492158816) and… Weakest on settlement and early exit terms (8/10): Positions are ERC-1155 tokens and the protocol page states "You can trade Position Tokens like regular tokens" with "Owners of the position tokens will always have final ownership of the assets in the vault" (docs.sofa.org/en/protocols/). Settlement pricing is automated, using "ChainLink's Automation service as our… Published price: "SOFA will collect 15% of the user's option premium as a base trading fee. Furthermore, in the event of a 'winning' payout occurring for the user, a further 5% settlement fee will be charged against the total Gross Upside Payout." (fetched 2026-08-07)
Best forFee embedded in the quote — 10/10
Main tradeoffThe 15% and 5% rates are not immutable, and the key that can change them is one key on all five chains. The FeeCollector bytecode contains setTradingFeeRate(uint256) (selector 1091f67c) and setSettlementFeeRate(uint256) (selector 589d0966), and owner() returns the same address 0xcC19E60c86c396929E76a6A488848C9596De22bD on Ethereum, Arbitrum, BNB Chain, Polygon and Sei. Corrected during verification: eth_getCode for that address returns 0x on all five chains, not just Ethereum, and its Ethereum nonce is 0x947 (2375 transactions) — an active externally owned account, with no multisig and no timelock in the path.
Verify before signup"SOFA will collect 15% of the user's option premium as a base trading fee. Furthermore, in the event of a 'winning' payout occurring for the user, a further 5% settlement fee will be charged against the total Gross Upside Payout." (fetched 2026-08-07)
Methodology
How this category is reviewed
Reviewed on payoff defined in a readable contract, counterparty backing the payoff, fee embedded in the quote, and settlement and early exit terms.
The order on this page is the published ranking for this category. Every criterion, weight and source behind it is on the methodology page.
Frequently asked
Questions people ask before choosing structured products
Who is on the other side of these trades?
Three of the seven make it legible and four do not. SOFA locks maker collateral in the vault, Ithaca is pre-funded and fully collateralised, and Idle publishes a first lien with a junior buffer whose size can be read on chain — in those three a buyer can size who pays if the payoff triggers. Aevo points at a margin engine, Exponent disclaims the underlying, Tranchess's payer can be empty, and Dyson's counterparty is the same pool that quotes the price. Dyson is explicit about what that means: its own docs say "the protocol holds a significant advantage over the users, as there are only two possible outcomes: either profit or breakeven", and that at redemption "the protocol tends to favor returning the relatively devalued token, which benefits the pool". That is an honest description of a house edge, published by the only provider here whose Risks page is the word TBD.
Which one is cheapest?
Not the one that discloses best, which is why fee disclosure and fee level are scored as different things. Normalised on 2026-08-07 to a $10,000 notional one-week option whose premium is $200 (2% of notional): SOFA takes 15% of the premium — $30.00 up front — plus 5% of any gross upside at settlement; Aevo charges a 0.05% taker fee, $5.00, against a cap of 12.5% of premium; Ithaca charges 0.04%, $4.00, against the same style of cap. On the entry leg alone SOFA costs six to seven and a half times the two order-book venues, before its settlement fee — and SOFA is the provider whose published rates match its contracts exactly. At the other end, Exponent's entire fee page contains zero numbers: trading, liquidity, vault, third-party and network fees are each described only as things that may apply and may vary, for a product whose senior side is sold "in exchange for principal protection".
Does good documentation mean the product still works?
No, and that is the most useful thing this comparison found. Ithaca has the best-specified payoff documentation of any provider here — full barrier settlement tables — and on 2026-08-07 the app URL its own official-links page points to served a page titled "AI Trading Agents | Systematic Crypto Trading" containing zero occurrences of Riskless, Twin Win, Barrier or Earn, its API host returned no response, and its FundLock held 0 USDC and 0 USDC.e. Tranchess shows the same gap differently: its docs still list two funds under "Current Stable tokens and their interest rates" at 8% APR, and neither has settled in 96 days — in one of them the token that owes the fixed 8% has a totalSupply() of 0. Documentation quality and product liveness are uncorrelated here, so both are checked separately.
Can the terms change after I buy?
On the most transparent product in the pool, yes, instantly. SOFA's published fee rates and its deployed contracts agree exactly — tradingFeeRate() returns 15% and settlementFeeRate() 5% on the Ethereum, Arbitrum, BNB Chain, Polygon and Sei FeeCollectors. The same contracts expose setTradingFeeRate(uint256) and setSettlementFeeRate(uint256), and owner() returns the same address on all five, whose eth_getCode is 0x. That is one externally owned account, no multisig and no timelock, able to reprice five chains at once. Accurate disclosure and revocable terms are not the same property, and this category scores them apart.
Not financial advice · For informational purposes only · Always do your own research
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