S&P Global to assess risks of crypto lending vaults
S&P Global Ratings has launched a new risk assessment system for on-chain vaults that allow investors to allocate digital assets to lending protocols. The company said the launch reflects the rapid growth of the market, with assets held in such vaults rising from $1.5 billion in September 2024 to about $10 billion in September 2026.
According to the company’s website, the new system is called Vault Risk Assessment, or VRA. It is designed to show the relative risk that an investor’s position in a lending vault could suffer losses.
S&P will assess six main areas: the quality of assets in the portfolio, liquidity, curator risk, blockchain and protocol risks, as well as the vault’s security and governance.
Assessments will use familiar letter grades with a “(v)” suffix. AAA(v) represents the lowest level of risk. S&P stresses, however, that VRA is not a traditional credit rating, does not measure expected returns and does not guarantee that investors will avoid losses.
First assessments will come later
The system can also be applied to vaults that issue loans backed by cryptocurrencies or tokenized real-world assets. S&P plans to publish the first assessments of specific projects later. No individual vault received a rating at launch.
The new product is part of S&P Global’s broader expansion into digital assets. The company previously launched stability assessments for stablecoins and in September announced the acquisition of OpenZeppelin, a company specializing in smart contract security.
Why such a service is needed
On-chain lending vaults can interact with several protocols, assets and blockchains at the same time, making it difficult for investors to assess all the risks independently. High yields alone do not show how reliable a protocol is, whether it has sufficient liquidity or how secure its smart contracts are.
VRA is designed to make these comparisons easier. Instead of analyzing dozens of technical and financial parameters separately, investors receive a single assessment that takes into account asset quality, liquidity, governance and infrastructure risks. This becomes increasingly relevant as the market grows, with around $10 billion already held in such vaults.
S&P Global has also recently noted improving credit rating trends.
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