Innovation: Technical Advancement
Assessing the uniqueness of technology and pace of development
What is Innovation?
Innovation is the I of STRICT. It asks whether the technology is being built and shipped, and whether it matters. The rating weighs what is new in the technology, development activity such as commits and releases, and advantages competitors cannot copy easily.
How the Innovation number is set
For every coin, the research step records a Innovation rating from 0 to 10 in the coin's input set, with a written rationale and the pages it cites. A report prints that rating times 10, on the 0 to 100 scale. The engine multiplies it by the Innovation weight of the coin's sector profile and adds the other rated pillars the same way. It divides that sum by the weights in use and rounds to a whole number: the result is the STRICT score.
A pillar without a rating is left out of both the sum and the weights in use, so the other pillars carry the score. It is never scored as zero.
Innovation weight in each sector profile
The engine reads one weight table for every coin. Across its 9 sector profiles, the Innovation weight runs from 0.08 to 0.26. The six weights of each profile add up to 1.00.
| Profile and sectors | Sectors (coins) | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Monetary | Store of Value (3) | 0.12 |
| Network protocol | Smart Contract Platform (30), Layer 1 (34), Layer 2 (25) | 0.24 |
| Financial protocol | DeFi (142), Exchange (20), Launchpad (5) | 0.16 |
| Technical infrastructure | Infrastructure (97), AI (94), DePIN (17), Privacy (20), Identity (7), Wallet (5), Social (7), IoT (3), Telecom (2) | 0.26 |
| Payments and RWA | RWA (91), Payments (20) | 0.12 |
| Adoption-led | Meme (61), Gaming (55), Entertainment (6), NFT (10), Sports (5) | 0.14 |
| Stable asset | Stablecoin (108) | 0.08 |
| Derivative | Wrapped Token (32), Liquid Staking (37) | 0.12 |
| Balanced | Any sector without its own profile, including Other (34) | 0.18 |
Key Evaluation Factors
Technology Uniqueness
Novel technological approaches create competitive moats and long-term value.
- Unique consensus mechanisms, architectures, or approaches
- Measurable improvements in speed, cost, or scalability
- Technical solutions to blockchain scalability challenges
Development Activity
Active development indicates a project is evolving and improving over time.
- Frequency and quality of GitHub commits
- Number of active contributors and core developers
- Regular feature releases and protocol upgrades
Competitive Advantages
Technical advantages that are difficult for competitors to replicate create lasting value.
- Unique features or capabilities others lack
- Technical or network effect barriers to competition
- First-mover advantages or unique market positioning
Where the evidence comes from
The input set of every coin must give each rated pillar a written rationale and at least one source address. A report never lists a page of this site as a source, and neither does the count below.
353 of the 935 input sets on file cite a third-party page for Innovation. The sites they cite most often:
- github.com: 136 citations
- coingecko.com: 26 citations
- etherscan.io: 9 citations
- defillama.com: 8 citations
- news.google.com: 8 citations
Worked example: Bitcoin
Bitcoin is in the monetary profile, where Innovation weighs 0.12. Its Innovation rating is 83, so this pillar adds 83 × 0.12 = 9.96 to the weighted sum. The weighted mean of all its rated pillars rounds to its published STRICT score of 92.
The rationale recorded in its input set of 15 Oct 2026:
Bitcoin Core 31.0 shipped in April 2026, followed by version 31.1 in July 2026 and 32.0rc4 in October 2026. Development prioritizes conservative reliability over rapid feature expansion.
Sources it cites
The rarity bands apply to the final STRICT score, never to one pillar on its own. They are published in full here: Rarity bands
- Legendary90-100
- Epic80-89
- Rare70-79
- Uncommon60-69
- Common0-59
Engine v5.2.0. Every figure on this page is read from the engine and the coin registry when the page is built. Latest analysis in the registry: 22 Oct 2026.
See Cryptos Ranked by Innovation
Browse cryptocurrencies sorted by their Innovation score.
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