Trusted Exchange Framework 2.3
Coin Metrics’ Trusted Exchange Framework (TEF) is a quantitative evaluation of crypto exchanges. We leverage the CM Market Data Feed and our extensive experience from collecting data to create a rigorous assessment across several key categories. The TEF serves as both a guideline for exchange quality as well as an input to Market Data Pro and CM Prices, and Indexes.
Overall Ranking
Centralized Exchanges
| Ranking | Change | Exchange | Data Quality (Spot) | Transparency | Resilience & Security | Regulatory Compliance | API Quality | Grade |
|---|
Decentralized Exchanges
| Ranking | Change | Exchange | Data Quality (Spot) | Transparency | Resilience & Security | Regulatory Compliance | API Quality | Grade |
|---|
Previous Versions
| DATE | NOTES | DOWNLOAD | |
|---|---|---|---|
| July 30, 2025 | Trusted Exchange Framework V2.3 released | Version 2.3 | |
| April 30, 2024 | Trusted Exchange Framework V2.2 released | Version 2.2 | |
| March 6, 2024 | Added a new rule to remove a failed exchanges ahead of an the next official TEF release 3 months after trading ceases | ||
| October 31, 2023 | Trusted Exchange Framework V2.1 released. Revamped Transparency, Resilience & Security, Regulatory scores; add grading scale, add rate limiting score | Version 2.1 | |
| March 1, 2023 | Trusted Exchange Framework V2.0 released | Version 2.0 |
Categories
Data Quality
The Data Quality score assesses the confidence that an exchange’s reported data represents the exchange’s actual trade activity.
This category utilizes several techniques that have been used to identify fake volume on an exchange: the distribution of leading digits and fitting against Benford’s Law, quantifying cross-correlation of volume across markets, examining the distribution of buy/sell flag permutations on trade sequences, examining the distribution of trade sizes, examining the frequency of round trip trades, an analysis of lead/lag of asset prices to determine where price discovery occurs, and an analysis of pricing anomalies.
﹡ Exchanges that have a score of B or above on the Data Quality category, which qualifies an exchange to be a part of our “trusted volume” universe, an important designation that is used to select high-quality constituent exchanges for the calculation of Coin Metrics’ prices, indexes, metrics, and other data products.
Transparency
The Transparency score is an assessment of the quality of publicly disclosed information from an exchange. This is valued using the following heuristic:
- High quality (proof of assets, liabilities, and oversight), timely (quarterly or better) Proof-of-Reserves
- Publicly disclosed financial information (quarterly or better “proofs” of assets and liabilities conducted by a third party auditor)
- Wallet disclosures, “proof” of assets but no credible proof of liabilities, ownership or oversight.
Resilience & Security
Resilience & Security refers to how well an exchange protects its users. This criteria assesses exchanges for enacting proactive compliance measures such as complying to security standards (SOC2 Type II or ISO/IEC 27001) and penalizes exchanges for historical major market incidents (extensive pausing of withdrawals due to market conditions) and security incidents (hacks, data breaches). Incidents are weighted by recency and value lost.
Regulatory Compliance
The Regulatory Compliance score is an assessment on an exchange’s ability to meet regulatory requirements across multiple jurisdictions via its existing licenses. This score tallies the number of licenses an exchange currently has from a list of highly regulated markets in the US, EMEA, and APAC.
API Quality
The API Quality score is an assessment of an exchange’s quality to be used as a programmable entity. The quality of technical infrastructure informs the ease-of-use of being able to execute actions programmatically, such as for reading data or executing trades, using an exchange’s API. Quality is assessed based on quantitative and quantitative factors that the Coin Metrics team has identified from building data feeds.
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