Crypto due diligence for project research

Core DD areas

Cover team and delivery history, token design, treasury or runway if disclosed, smart-contract and custody assumptions, liquidity venues, regulatory surface, and the catalyst calendar. Skip any bucket and you are guessing with extra steps. Depth on five candidates beats skim on fifty screenshots.

Separate product risk from token risk early. A shipping team with a governance coupon that captures nothing is a different case from a mediocre product with aggressive emissions into a thin book. Due diligence fails when those get mashed together.

Write claims you can verify: contract addresses, unlock tables, venue depth, audit scope. “Strong community” is not a claim until you define a metric. Alphora helps structure the note; you still pull primary sources. On-chain clues need competing explanations before they change size.

Supply, liquidity, and exit reality

Stress-test unlock calendars and insider float before you fall in love with the narrative. Ask who is paid to sell and whether demand can absorb that supply. FDV without timing is incomplete DD. Farmed metrics can imitate product-market fit until rewards end.

Check liquidity relative to intended size. If your exit would move the market violently, your thesis includes microstructure risk whether you admit it or not. Venue concentration and bridge dependence belong on the same page. Ledger data informs judgment; it does not replace tokenomics homework.

Use /crypto pages for quick context and Research Score triage, then deepen with docs and explorers. Mark Pass in Discover when the float path fails — that is diligence working, not FOMO lost. Investment research without outcome tracking is content consumption.

Contracts, keys, and operational risk

Smart-contract risk covers bugs, upgrade keys, oracles, and economic exploits. Audits reduce uncertainty; they do not delete it. Note admin powers and pause functions as clearly as you note TVL headlines. No buy or sell ratings by design keeps the research posture clean.

Custody and counterparty assumptions matter for wrapped assets, bridges, and centralized venues. Crypto project due diligence that ignores where assets actually sit is incomplete even if the whitepaper sparkles. Low float discovery can juice prints and unwind hard when locks open.

Turning DD into a living brief

Use Ask to shape bull/base/bear, kill criteria, and monitors once the facts are gathered. Then track the idea in a thesis basket so DD does not end at entry. Research software supports the process; it is not a due diligence firm and not advice.

Revisit when catalysts land or unlocks approach. Stale DD is how good notes become dangerous comfort. Update falsifiers in writing so attachment does not rewrite history. Uncapped issuance needs an emissions model, not a fake ceiling FDV. If it cannot be monitored weekly, it is not a monitor.