Live data
Which numbers can move a score
No number read from a live feed enters a score. Prices, yields, borrow rates, volumes and total value locked change by the hour, and a ranking that moved with them would be a price feed: the feeds below are shown beside the ranking, dated and sourced, and never change it. A score reads two kinds of figure, each recorded in the catalog with its source and the date it was read, and read again on the category's 45-day review. One is a fee schedule, the price a provider publishes for its own service. The other is a researched market measurement that a criterion's published ladder is built on, such as a chain's total value locked, a reward token's 24-hour trading volume or the balance a lending pool holds at a named block: our research reads it once, from the source the criterion names, and it stays as read until the next review, however the market moves. A rate the market sets, such as the borrow rate of a lending pool, is not a fee: it may be shown, dated, and decides no order, not even a tie. A market reading on a result page may suggest a priority; nothing moves until you apply it, and the score then reads the priority you chose.
Read by a score
A fee is the provider's own price for its service, not a market rate. Where a category has one, it enters the fee term of Measured data (up to 8 of that dimension's 18 points), exactly as the catalog records it.
Where a criterion's published ladder is built on one, such as whether a chain holds enough to trade against once you arrive, our research reads it once, records it with its source and date, and grades it on that ladder. It does not follow the market between reviews. The criteria that read one are listed below.
The criteria that read a market measurement
Each was read by our research with its source and date, and is read again on the category's 45-day review. Between reviews it does not move.
- Appchains / L3s: Measured liquidity on arrival. A chain's DeFi total value locked and the stablecoins on it, against L2BEAT's value-secured breakdown · DefiLlama and L2BEAT
- CDP Stablecoins: What actually backs the coin. How much of the circulating supply comes from vaults users opened, against a peg-stability module or an allocator line · The protocol's contracts and dashboards, read on chain
- Cross-Chain Messaging: Cost per message. A protocol's quoted fee for one identical message, converted at that morning's ETH and LINK prices · Each protocol's quoting contract, and DefiLlama's prices
- DePIN Networks: Verified dollar demand. Fees and burns paid by customers · DefiLlama's fees API
- DePIN Networks: Reward integrity and liquidity. The reward token's 24-hour trading volume against the cost of one hardware unit · CoinGecko
- Fixed-Rate Yield: The price of leaving early. Whether a secondary venue's depth is readable and not empty on the day of the check · The venue's pool or order book
- Flash Loan Venues: Single-transaction borrowable depth. The token balance the lending contract holds at a named Ethereum block · The contract, read on chain, against DefiLlama
- NFT Lending: Operating status and incident record. A protocol's NFT-lending total value locked on one date, against its own all-time peak · DefiLlama
- Options Vaults: Audit and incident record. Whether the vault still operates, read in part from its total value locked · DefiLlama
- Privacy Tools: Live anonymity set and measurable usage. Value held and recent deposit flow · DefiLlama and L2BEAT
- Restaking: Does the wrapper tell me what it runs on, and is what it tells me still true today?. A vendor's headline total value locked and rate, checked against the same day's protocol data · The protocol's own data, read on chain
- Tokenised Commodities: Round-trip cost with spread. The token's deviation from spot gold, its venue spread and traded volume, on one day · The quoted trading venues
- Tokenised T-Bills: Redemption reality. Secondary-market depth, beside the contractual redemption right · The trading venues and the issuer's own terms
- Wrapped Assets: Published dated cost. A wrap and unwrap fee converted at a dated bitcoin price · DefiLlama's coins API
Shown beside the ranking, never in it
It measures how much is deposited, not whether you can leave with your funds, which is what the ranking asks.
These live figures are paused while ChainChoice asks DefiLlama for written approval to show them.
What a transaction costs and how much a chain secures are what a user weighs once they know they can leave with their funds; the ranking asks the second question, not these.
L2BEAT's value-secured figures are paused while ChainChoice asks L2BEAT for written approval to show them.
It measures adoption, not the security record and decentralisation the ranking asks about.
These live figures are paused while ChainChoice asks DefiLlama for written approval to show them.
It measures adoption, not the security record and decentralisation the ranking asks about.
These live figures are paused while ChainChoice asks DefiLlama for written approval to show them.
Base yields move with network rewards, and a higher one is usually paid for with more risk.
These live figures are paused while ChainChoice asks DefiLlama for written approval to show them.
A variable rate that floats with how much of a pool is borrowed; a higher rate is usually compensation for higher risk.
These live figures are paused while ChainChoice asks DefiLlama for written approval to show them.
Prices describe the asset, not the provider you would use to hold or trade it.
A conversion helps you read a price in your own currency; a score reads the price in the currency the provider published it in.
The ECB publishes no rate for these currencies; a dated, named rate lets a reader there read a price in their own money, and a score still reads the price in the currency the provider published it in.
They are read in your browser at the moment you look, so two readers would see two rankings if a score read them.
They may suggest raising a priority, such as fees when gas is high. Nothing moves until you apply it, and the score then reads the priority you chose, not the reading. A saved decision is checked again on the answers you saved, never on the market.
On every build a test fills each live feed with extreme values, runs every category's ranking again, on no answers and on every answer the questions can give, and fails if a single score moves; a feed the site serves that is missing from this list fails it too, as does code on the ranking path that could read the network, a feed file or browser storage, or a market reading handed to the ranking as one of your answers. A second test reads every criterion's published ladder: one that names a market measurement must be listed above, and every row it scores must carry the source and date of its figure. Every live figure prints its source and the date its feed was read. For 6 hours that is all; until 12 hours it also says how old it is; after that a /best page shows “feed-pending” instead of an old figure, and the screener says how long ago its markets were read. A check in a browser holds every live cell to its feed file's own date.