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.
Ranked here: structured products that promise a reader a defined payoff, with a counterparty that owes it. Not ranked here: products that promise no defined payoff, whatever else they offer.
SO
#1 of 7 · published ranking
SOFA.org (Earn and Surge)
82ChainChoice Score
4199
Why it leads
SOFA.org (Earn and Surge) scores higher than everything else in this ranking on its contract defined payoff and its counterparty backing.
Show the arithmetic
Best in this ranking on contract defined payoff and counterparty backing
Cost
Not priced· No comparable price is published
ReviewedNext review by Published Methodology v2026.11.1
How this page is reviewed
Reviewed means every product ranked on this page was read against its sources on or after that date; every ranked category is re-read at least every 45 days. Models research, extract and parse. A deterministic engine ranks. Every quote passes an adversarial refute pass.
No provider can pay for a position in this table. The code that computes this order cannot read which links carry a referral code, and every build proves it. Every score below rebuilds from the published criteria.Ranking v2026.11.1 · 4 criteria · 7 products · same inputs, same order
How we review · 7 ranked of 7 assessed · 4 criteria · 0 sponsor weight
How we review
7ranked
7assessed
4criteria
0sponsor weight
Recommendation first, comparison only if needed.
Reviewed and rechecked on the current cycle.
Commercial relationships disclosed before clickout.
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...
82score
Check availability for your country
SOFA.org (Earn and Surge) · sofa.org. Provider links appear once we know which country you are browsing from: ChainChoice links to providers only where it serves in full.
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.
2
Idle Yield Tranches (Senior AA and Junior BB)Senior and junior claims on a single yi...
Fee embedded in the quote — 8/10Trade-off: Idle's own homepage now says "Idle is now Pareto – the credit coordination protocol"...
70score
Check availability for your country
Idle Yield Tranches (Senior AA and Junior BB) · idle.finance. Provider links appear once we know which country you are browsing from: ChainChoice links to providers only where it serves in full.
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.
Counterparty backing the payoff — 8/10Trade-off: The design is the best documented in the category and the venue appears dormant. Corr...
69score
Check availability for your country
Ithaca Protocol · app.ithacaprotocol.io. Provider links appear once we know which country you are browsing from: ChainChoice links to providers only where it serves in full.
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.
Payoff defined in a readable contract — 7/10Trade-off: PERPS+ is only a shape on top of a perp, not a note. The FAQ restricts it to BTC and...
67score
Check availability for your country
Aevo PERPS+ · aevo.xyz. Provider links appear once we know which country you are browsing from: ChainChoice links to providers only where it serves in full.
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.
5
Tranchess Turbo and StableA fixed-rate tranche and a ten-times le...
Payoff defined in a readable contract — 7/10Trade-off: The two funds the docs present as current matured on 2026-01-27 and are frozen, and o...
58score
Check availability for your country
Tranchess Turbo and Stable · tranchess.com. Provider links appear once we know which country you are browsing from: ChainChoice links to providers only where it serves in full.
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.
6
Exponent Risk-TranchingSenior and junior tranches over a singl...
Payoff defined in a readable contract — 6/10Trade-off: The senior tranche is sold as a lower return "in exchange for principal protection" (...
54score
Check availability for your country
Exponent Risk-Tranching · exponent.finance. Provider links appear once we know which country you are browsing from: ChainChoice links to providers only where it serves in full.
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.
Ranked on 4 published criteria weighted 30/28/24/18, which set goal alignment — 30 of the 86 points. The rest: regional access 20 (constant here), evidence depth 18 (constant here), ease of use 10 (constant here), institutional trust 8 (constant here). Profile match is shown in breakdowns but carries no weight.
How you can lose money here, and what the ranking scores
Insolvency failure: the firm or issuer that owes you cannot pay.
Scored by Counterparty backing the payoff · 28% (SOFA.org (Earn and Surge) 9/10, Idle Yield Tranches (Senior AA and Junior BB) 6/10, Ithaca Protocol 8/10)
Exit failure: you cannot get out at par, on time, or with what is yours.
Scored by Settlement and early exit terms · 18% (SOFA.org (Earn and Surge) 8/10, Idle Yield Tranches (Senior AA and Junior BB) 8/10, Ithaca Protocol 5/10)
Information failure: the number is wrong or bought, or your data leaks.
Scored by Payoff defined in a readable contract · 30% (SOFA.org (Earn and Surge) 9/10, Idle Yield Tranches (Senior AA and Junior BB) 7/10, Ithaca Protocol 7/10)
Not assessed by this ranking: Contract failure, Control failure, Custody failure, Regulatory failure. A high place says nothing about these; the Methodology tab says what each means.
Also scored, as cost, quality or a summary of several families: Fee embedded in the quote (24%).
Audit
Infrastructure
Methodology
2026.11.1
published 10 November 2026
Providers tracked
860+
across 121 categories
Last verified
28 September 2026
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.
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 engine lead
The #1 overall and the scoring weights
SO
SOFA.org (Earn and Surge)Data checked Sep 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): SOFA's fee page states a 15% take on the option premium and a further 5% on any winning payout, and writes both into the payoff formula. The FeeCollector contracts on Ethereum, Arbitrum, BNB Chain, Polygon and Sei return the same 15% and 5% rates, which a single owner key can change. Weakest on settlement and early exit terms (8/10): SOFA positions are ERC-1155 tokens that can be traded like regular tokens, and a user may withdraw early at a value that can fall below the deposit. Settlement prices come from Chainlink Automation with no stated tie-break rule, and one vault generation disables claims before expiry. Published price: "SOFA will collect 15% of the user's option premium as a base trading fee.
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. On 28 September 2026 that address still had no code on Arbitrum, BNB Chain, Polygon or Sei, but on Ethereum it carries an EIP-7702 delegation to 0x63c0c19a282a1b52b07dd5a65b58948a07dae32b (EIP7702StatelessDeleGator 1.3.0) and its nonce has risen from 2375 to 2497. It is still one key, 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." (Protocol Fees page, docs.sofa.org/en/technical-design/fees.html, fetched 28 September 2026; wording unchanged since 7 August 2026.) The same page writes both fees into the buyer's payoff when the product is not knocked out: "Premium * (1 - 0.15 - 0.05)" plus "MM'sCollateral * (1 - 0.05)". On-chain read, not page text: eth_call on 28 September 2026 returned tradingFeeRate() = 150000000000000000 (15%) and settlementFeeRate() = 50000000000000000 (5%) on the Ethereum, Arbitrum and BNB Chain FeeCollectors and on the Polygon and Sei FeeCollectorSimple.
Weighted criteria
Payoff defined in a readable contract30%
Counterparty backing the payoff28%
Fee embedded in the quote24%
Settlement and early exit terms18%
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.
Reviewed28 September 2026Method4 criteriaCategorystructured_products
Not financial advice · For informational purposes only · Always do your own research
