Crypto startup due diligence checklist: 6 steps on 1 project

A crypto startup due diligence checklist comes down to 6 steps: separate the operators from the advisors, read the audit flag, read the KYC flag, read the token structure, read the trust score against the set it sits in, and read the community size. NAUT scores 1,697 live crypto project rows, and of those 108 carry an audit flag, 88 carry a KYC flag and 55 sit in the high or very high trust tier, all read from NAUT's database on 8 November 2026.

Data note. Every count and every flag here was read from NAUT's own database on 8 November 2026, read-only. The worked project, PairedWorld, was picked because its row carries all 6 fields the checklist needs, which most rows do not. 2 claims about it were put to outside sources: the funding round came back confirmed on 2 sources, and the initial circulating supply figure came back contradicted, so the circulating number below is printed as NAUT's stored field and no outside claim is made on it. 1 field inside the row disagrees with another field inside the same row, and that conflict is left in rather than tidied away, because finding it is the point of step 4. Anyone listed can ask NAUT to remove their page at https://naut.so/legal/data-deletion.

Crypto startup due diligence checklist: the 6 steps

Each step is 1 field you can read before you take a call, and each one ends in a name, a flag or a number you can act on.

• Titles do the sorting, and the founder flag does not. 2 of the 4 contacts on the worked row carry a co-founder title for the company itself. The other 2 carry titles naming an outside firm and a university.
• An audit flag and a KYC flag are 2 separate questions, and most rows answer neither. 108 of 1,697 scored rows are flagged audited and 88 are flagged KYC-checked.
• Token structure is where the money sits. A raise figure, a fully diluted valuation and an allocation split read together say what you would be buying.
• A trust score is only useful against the set it was scored in. 55 of 1,697 sit in the top 2 tiers, so a high tier is a real filter.
• Community size dates the project. A follower count plus a listing status says whether the token event has already happened.
• A backer list on a directory is that directory's record, never the full cap table.

What does a crypto startup due diligence checklist check? 6 fields on 1 row

Here is the whole checklist run against PairedWorld, with the stored value and what each value changes about the next thing you would do.

The row also carries a bounty flag and an MVP flag set true, and a whitelist flag and a retrodrop flag set false. Those 4 are product-stage signals rather than diligence signals, so they sit outside the 6 steps.

Steps 1 and 2: who runs it, and who only advises it

NAUT names 4 people on this row, all 4 live and unarchived, and the row's own founder count reads 4. Read the title strings and that 4 splits into 2 and 2. This is the single highest-value minute in the checklist, because it decides who gets the email.

Person	Stored job title	Reads as
Aleks Kay	Co-Founder & Board Member	Operator
Raluca Cherciu	Co-Founder & President of the Board	Operator
Ralf Glabischnig	Managing Partner Inacta Ventures, Co-Founder Crypto Oasis	Outside firm
Prof. Dr. Gerhard Schwabe	Professor of Information Management, Co-Founder of the University of Zürich Blockchain Center	Academic adviser

2 of the 4 titles name a co-founder role at the company itself. The other 2 name a venture firm and a university, so they read as advisers attached to the project rather than people running it day to day. A founder count of 4 on the row would have sent a cold email to all 4, and 2 of those 4 would have been the wrong desk.

One of those 2 advisers is worth a second look for a different reason. Ralf Glabischnig's stored title names him Managing Partner at Inacta Ventures, and Inacta Ventures is 1 of the 6 funds NAUT ties to this project as a backer. An adviser whose own firm also holds a position is a normal arrangement and a fair question to put on a call, and you only see it because the title string and the backer list sit on the same page.

Steps 2 and 3: what do the audit and KYC flags actually tell you?

They tell you a flag was set, and that is less than a report. On this row both are true, which puts it in a small minority twice over. Read the flags as a question to ask rather than an answer you already have: which firm ran the audit, on which commit, and who at the company was identity-checked.

Each bar counts live, unmerged project rows that carry a trust score, so all 5 bars are cuts of the same 1,697. A row can appear in more than 1 bar, and this project appears in 3 of the 5. The gap between 1,697 scored rows and 108 audit flags is the real finding: for the other 1,589 rows the audit question has no answer stored on NAUT at all, which means asking the team, never assuming a no.

Step 4: crypto token structure, and the conflict inside 1 row

This is the step that found a defect. NAUT stores a total raise of $3,090,000 for this project and a fully diluted valuation of $39,000,000, which is 12.6x the stored raise. It stores a total supply of 1,000,000,000 tokens, a private allocation of 0.15%, a public allocation of 6% and an initial circulating supply of 5.26%.

Then read the row's own summary text, which says the company raised $1,5M. So 2 fields inside 1 row give 2 different raise figures, and the outside check settles it in favour of the smaller one: NAUT's research found a private round that ran 1 March to 15 April 2024 and secured $1.5M, on a funding page and a second news page. Every figure above is the stored field, and the 12.6x is that stored field divided into the stored FDV, so a reader pricing an entry should treat the multiple as a question for the team rather than a measurement. On the same caution, the 5.26% initial circulating figure is NAUT's stored field and the outside check on it came back contradicted, so it is printed here as a stored value and nothing more.

That is the general lesson of step 4, and it does not depend on this project. A tokenomics sheet is a set of fields that were entered at different times by different people, so check each number against the token's own page and against the round announcement before any of them goes into a model.

Step 5 and step 6: the trust score and the community

The score is 5.28, the tier is high and the stored tier rank is 4. The score rank on the row is 1,214. A score means something only against the population it was computed in, and that population is the 1,697 rows above, of which 55 carry a high or very high tier. So the tier is doing more work here than the number: being in those 55 is a filter, and 5.28 on its own is a figure without a scale.

Step 6 dates the whole file. The row carries 10,032 X followers, a launched token and a listing status of past, so the token event has already happened and anyone reading this as a pre-launch opportunity is reading an old file. For a BD lead that is good news rather than bad: a project with a live token has a treasury, a community to market to and a reason to answer a partnership note.

Step 6 continued: who backed it, on NAUT's record

NAUT ties 6 named funds to this project as backer records, and each one has 1 unambiguous investor page: G-20 Group, Gains Associates, Inacta Ventures, Gemhead Capital, Spicy Capital and Unicorn Ventures. A 7th fund named in the row's own text is held under 2 separate live NAUT company rows that were never merged, so which row is the backer is ambiguous and it is left unlinked here rather than pointed at a guess.

The row's own summary text names 10 funds in total. 6 of those 10 are the backer records above. The other 4 are named in the text and carry no backer link on this row, so NAUT's record does not place them in the round even though the row's own words do. That is a count of NAUT's records, never a count of the round: all 6 of the funds linked above also appear among the names NAUT's outside check saw on the funding page, and a fund can be in a round with no record on any directory.

What this tells a deal maker

The 6 steps sort a project in about 5 minutes, and 2 of them decide whether you send anything at all. Most crypto due diligence time goes on the 2 steps below that end in a question rather than a field.

• Run steps 1, 5 and 6 first. A team you can name, a tier in the top 55 of 1,697 and a live token are the 3 that qualify a project as worth an hour.
• Treat steps 2 and 3 as questions. A true flag earns a question about the auditor and the date, and an absent flag earns the same question rather than a no.
• Do step 4 twice, once on the stored fields and once on the project's own token page, because this row had 2 raise figures inside it.
• Send to the operators. 2 of the 4 names on this row carry a co-founder title for the company, and the other 2 carry titles naming an outside firm and a university.

Related reading on NAUT: How to verify a crypto investor: 6 checks, 143 funds pass 4 and How to research a VC fund: 6 checks, 23 rounds, 27 partners.

Can you pull this data through the NAUT API?

Yes. The call behind this article is GET https://api.naut.so/v1/projects/pairedworld, which returns 1 company row with its team, and GET https://api.naut.so/v1/projects?token=launched lists project rows with a launched token, each call sent with an Authorization: Bearer $NAUT_KEY header at 5 credits. Endpoints and fields are at the API docs and plans start at $49 a month for 3,000 credits at NAUT pricing. Verified Telegram, email and LinkedIn for the people on these rows unlock on any paid NAUT plan, so start a 7-day trial if you need to reach them.

Crypto startup due diligence checklist FAQ

What to check before investing in a crypto startup?

6 fields: the team titles, the audit flag, the KYC flag, the token structure, the trust score against the set it was scored in, and the community size with the listing status. Read against NAUT's database on 8 November 2026, 108 of 1,697 scored crypto project rows carry an audit flag and 88 carry a KYC flag, so for most rows steps 2 and 3 end in a question to the team.

How do I tell a crypto startup's founders from its advisers?

Read the stored job title rather than any founder count, because a title names the company a person works for. On PairedWorld the founder count reads 4, and the 4 titles split into 2 co-founder roles at the company, held by Aleks Kay and Raluca Cherciu, and 2 roles naming an outside venture firm and a university.

Does a high crypto project trust score mean a project is safe?

No, it means the project ranks well inside the population it was scored in. NAUT scored 1,697 live crypto project rows as of 8 November 2026 and 55 of them sit in the high or very high tier, so the tier is a filter on a crowded set rather than a verdict on a single project, and the audit and KYC flags behind it are flags rather than reports.

How do I check a crypto token structure before I buy?

Read the raise, the fully diluted valuation, the total supply and the allocation split together, then check each one against the project's own token page. On this row NAUT stores a $3,090,000 raise against a $39,000,000 FDV, which is 12.6x, while the row's own summary text and 2 outside sources checked on 8 November 2026 give a $1.5M private round, so the 2 figures have to be reconciled before any multiple is used.

Where can I find a crypto project's team, backers and flags in one place?

On its NAUT page, which is where all 6 fields in this checklist were read. PairedWorld carries 4 named people, 6 linked backer pages out of the 10 funds its own text names, a 5.28 trust score and both compliance flags, and GET https://api.naut.so/v1/projects/pairedworld returns the same row to a script. Verified Telegram, email and LinkedIn for those people unlock on any paid NAUT plan, so start a 7-day trial to open the contact channels.

Sources

• NAUT's own database, read on 8 November 2026, read-only: the PairedWorld company row with its trust score, tier, tier rank, score rank, compliance flags, tokenomics fields, follower count and listing status, its 4 live people rows with their job titles, and its backer records. The 1,697-row flag spread counts live, unmerged project rows with a trust score.
• coinlaunch.space, read by NAUT's research pass on 8 November 2026: a private funding round that ran 1 March to 15 April 2024 and secured $1.5M, naming the investor group. A second news page carrying the same $1.5M figure was recorded alongside it.
• coincarp.com, read by NAUT's research pass on 8 November 2026: the check on the initial circulating supply came back contradicted against NAUT's stored 5.26%, so that figure is printed above as a stored field with no outside claim attached to it.