How to research a crypto project before investing comes down to 5 checks on its NAUT record: the trust score, the audit flag, the KYC flag, the funding history and the team. Run on ChainGPT against NAUT's database on 4 November 2026, those 5 checks return a trust score of 7.25 of 10 at rank 33 of the 1,763 companies NAUT scores, an audit flag and a KYC flag both set to true, 18 funding rows worth $4,091,197 in total, and 11 team rows, 8 of them with a full name and a NAUT person page.
Data note. Every figure below was read from NAUT's own database on 4 November 2026, read-only, and nothing was written back. The worked project is ChainGPT, a web3 AI product on the domain chaingpt.org that NAUT tags AI, L1/2/3, Intelligence and Launchpad. 4 claims from this record went to an outside source check for this article: the CEO title, the audit, the X account and the funding total. 3 of those 4 came back confirmed with a source. The funding total came back contradicted against the ICO Drops page for the project, read on 4 November 2026, which carries a smaller total over fewer rounds, so the 18 rows and the $4,091,197 below are given as NAUT's record of funding events and check 4 is how a reader settles a figure like that. The trust score is stored as 7.246942 and shown here as 7.25. 5 of the 11 team rows are named in this article, the 5 that carry both a role and a NAUT person page used below. NAUT Research wrote it. Anyone listed can ask NAUT to remove their page at https://naut.so/legal/data-deletion.
How to research a crypto project in 5 checks
Open the company's page on NAUT first, because all 5 fields sit on 1 screen and each one is a separate question. The order matters: the score tells you whether to spend the next 20 minutes, the 2 flags tell you what has been verified, the funding rows tell you who else paid, and the team tells you who to write to.
- Read the trust scoreChainGPT carries 7.25 of 10, rank 33 of the 1,763 companies NAUT scores.
- Check the audit flagSet to true on NAUT's record, and the project's own blog publishes a CertiK review.
- Check the KYC flagSet to true, so NAUT's record holds an identity check against the team.
- Read the funding history18 funding rows worth $4,091,197 on NAUT's record, the largest a $570,000 Private A Round.
- Read the team11 team rows, 8 with a full name and a NAUT person page, 1 flagged as a founder.
This is the whole crypto project checklist in 1 pass. Every field named here is on the project page NAUT links from its search, so the 5 checks cost 1 page open rather than 5 tabs of guesswork.
What do the 5 checks show on 1 live project?
All 5, side by side, with what each field answers and what it leaves open.
| Check | NAUT's data | Left open |
|---|---|---|
| Trust score | 7.25 of 10, rank 33 of 1,763 scored companies | How the score is weighted round by round |
| Audit flag | true | Which firm audited, and when the report was dated |
| KYC flag | true | Which entity or jurisdiction the team filed under |
| Funding history | 18 rows, $4,091,197 total, no backer field on any row | Who led any of the 18 rows |
| Team | 11 rows, 8 with a full name and a page | Which of the 11 still hold the role today |
The right column is the point of the exercise. A flag is a pointer to a document, so crypto project due diligence means reading the document the flag points at.
Check 1: the crypto trust score, and what rank 33 of 1,763 buys you
NAUT scores 1,763 companies, and ChainGPT sits at rank 33 of them with 7.25 of 10. A crypto trust score is useful as a sort order rather than as a verdict: it puts this row near the front of a 1,763-row queue, which is a reason to spend the next 20 minutes on it.
Read it next to the other fields NAUT holds as booleans on the same record, because a score moves when they do.
| Flag | Value | How to read it |
|---|---|---|
| Audit flag | true | NAUT records an audit for this project, so open the report |
| KYC flag | true | NAUT records an identity check against the team |
| MVP flag | true | NAUT records a working product rather than a deck |
| Bounty flag | true | NAUT records a bounty programme |
| Token launched | true | A live token, so a price and an unlock schedule exist |
| Whitelist flag | false | NAUT holds no whitelist on record for this project |
| Retrodrop flag | false | NAUT holds no retroactive airdrop on record |
5 of those 7 fields are set to true and 2 are set to false, which is the fastest read of a project record NAUT offers.
Check 2: the audit flag, then the audit itself
The flag is set to true, and the outside check for this article confirmed that the project publishes audit reports: a Hacken report from April 2023 and a CertiK review. ChainGPT's own blog post on the CertiK Skynet review says of the contract it covers that "the contract was found to be flawless in this regard."
That is 1 contract in 1 report from 1 firm, so read the scope line of the report before you treat an audit flag as cover. The questions worth asking of any audit are which contract address was reviewed, what date the review carries, and whether the code shipped after it was reviewed again.
Check 3: the KYC flag
NAUT's record sets the KYC flag to true for this project, which means an identity check sits behind the team rather than an anonymous founder set. For a deal maker that changes the next step: there is a named person to write to, and the team section below names 5 of them with their roles.
A KYC flag does not name the filing entity or the jurisdiction, so an investor writing a cheque asks for the entity name and the registration number directly.
Which funding rows does NAUT hold for this project?
18 of them, worth $4,091,197 in total on NAUT's record, and not 1 row carries a backer field. The round type is the only place a name shows up at all: 6 of the 18 name the platform the round ran on, a $50,000 Private B on Decubate, a $50,000 Private B on YAY Network, and 4 IDO rows run on Poolz Finance at $120,000, Enjinstarter at $100,000, Seedify at $284,806 and WePad at $100,000. The types split 3 ways: 8 IDO rows worth $1,309,797, 7 Private rows worth $1,602,400, and 3 further rows worth $1,179,000, a $405,000 Seed, a $450,000 Influencers Round and a $324,000 KOL round.
Those 7 rows hold $2,823,991 of the $4,091,197, and the 11 rows left run from $284,806 down to $50,000. The shape is the signal here: a long tail of launchpad and private rows, which tells a founder that this project raised through launchpads and tells an investor to open each row's source for the names the structured record does not store.
A backer list is NAUT's record and never the world's. An empty backer column means NAUT holds no named firm for those 18 rows, not that none exists, and a round's own announcement will often name one, which is what each row's stored source URL is for: every row on this record points at either cryptorank.io or coinlaunch.space. On this project the official ChainGPT token sale post from 9 April 2023 names Castrum, Fairum Ventures and Kangaroo Capital among the firms that backed it before the token launch, none of which appears anywhere in the 18 stored rows.
How to research a crypto project as an investor or a BD lead
- The score sorts, the flags point and the rows pay. Rank 33 of 1,763 is worth 20 minutes; the 18 rows worth $4,091,197 tell you the size of cheque this team has handled.
- An outside check moved 1 of the 4 claims tested. The funding total did not reconcile with the ICO Drops page read on 4 November 2026, so a total is the figure to verify first in any crypto project due diligence pass.
- The team is the only field you can act on today. 11 rows on NAUT's record, 1 of them flagged as a founder, and 6 of the 11 carry an X handle.
- A missing field is a task, not a finding. NAUT's 18 funding rows carry no backer field, so the names come from each row's source: the project's own token sale post names Castrum, Fairum Ventures and Kangaroo Capital, and that list is who a fund asks about first.
- Open the project pageChainGPT holds the score, 7 flags, 18 funding rows and 11 team rows on 1 page.
- Settle the funding figureNAUT records 18 rows and $4,091,197; the ICO Drops page read on 4 November 2026 did not confirm that total.
- Pick 1 nameIlan Rakhmanov is the CEO and CMO on NAUT's record and the 1 founder-flagged row of the 11.
- Write on 1 channel3 of the 5 people named below carry an X handle on NAUT's record, starting with @ceoguy.
Who runs the project, and how do you reach them?
NAUT's record held 11 team rows for ChainGPT at that read on 4 November 2026. 8 of them carry a full name and a NAUT person page. The 5 below are the rows this article names, each with the role NAUT holds and whether an X handle is on file.
| Person | Role | X handle |
|---|---|---|
 Ilan Rakhmanov |
CEO & CMO, founder flag true | @ceoguy |
 Ariel Asafov |
Chief Operations Officer | @arielasafov |
 Felix Tonio Stintzing |
Content & Media Director | @ToniStintzing |
 Jacob Wallace |
Business Development Manager | Not on file |
 Vladi Filatov |
Chief Administrative Officer | Not on file |
Ilan Rakhmanov is the row to start from. NAUT holds him as CEO & CMO with the founder flag set, and the outside check for this article confirmed the title: iq.wiki's page on him, read on 4 November 2026, calls him "the Chief Executive Officer and Founder of ChainGPT AI since September 2022", with a second profile on coingabbar.com saying the same. The project's X account, @chain_gpt, was confirmed as the official one against the account itself and the project's own documentation, and its bio describes web3 AI tools and names a Binance listing for its token.
Match the role to the ask. A founder raising writes to the CEO. A BD lead selling infrastructure writes to Jacob Wallace as Business Development Manager. A partnerships or media pitch goes to Felix Tonio Stintzing as Content & Media Director, and an operations or vendor conversation goes to Ariel Asafov or Vladi Filatov. Anyone listed can ask NAUT to remove their page at https://naut.so/legal/data-deletion.
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. GET https://api.naut.so/v1/projects/chaingpt returns this article's company row with its team, which is the score, the flags and the 11 people in 1 JSON response, and GET https://api.naut.so/v1/search?q=chaingpt finds the row by name first if you do not hold the slug. Every call is a GET against https://api.naut.so/v1 with an Authorization: Bearer $NAUT_KEY header at 5 credits a call, with the parameters documented at https://naut.so/docs/api and plans from $49 a month for 3,000 credits at https://naut.so/pricing. Verified Telegram, email and LinkedIn for the people on those pages unlock on any paid NAUT plan, so you can start a 7-day trial and reach them the same day.
How to research a crypto project FAQ
How do you research a crypto project before investing?
Run 5 checks on the project's NAUT record in this order: the trust score, the audit flag, the KYC flag, the funding history and the team, then open the document behind each flag. On ChainGPT, read from NAUT's database on 4 November 2026, that returned 7.25 of 10 at rank 33 of 1,763 scored companies, an audit flag and a KYC flag both true, 18 funding rows worth $4,091,197, and 11 team rows with 1 founder flag among them.
What does a crypto trust score of 7.25 mean on NAUT?
It is a 0 to 10 score NAUT holds on 1,763 companies, and 7.25 puts ChainGPT at rank 33 of that scored set as of 4 November 2026. Use it as a sort order for a shortlist, then read the audit flag, the KYC flag, the 18 funding rows and the 11 team rows behind it before the score decides anything.
Does an audit flag mean a crypto project is safe?
No. The flag records that NAUT holds an audit for the project, and on ChainGPT the outside check for this article found published reports from Hacken dated April 2023 and a CertiK review, which covers the contracts in those reports on those dates. Read the scope and the date of the report itself, because code shipped after an audit is code nobody audited.
How do I check a crypto project's funding history?
Read the funding rows on its NAUT page, count them, add the amounts, then check the total against the project's own announcements. On this project NAUT holds 18 rows worth $4,091,197 with no backer field on any row, split into 8 IDO rows at $1,309,797 and 7 Private rows at $1,602,400, and the ICO Drops page read on 4 November 2026 did not confirm that total, which is exactly why the 4th check exists.
Where can I find ChainGPT's team and their contact channels?
On NAUT: /projects/chaingpt holds the 11 team rows, the 7 flags and the 18 funding rows, the people pages of Ilan Rakhmanov, Ariel Asafov, Felix Tonio Stintzing, Jacob Wallace and Vladi Filatov hold the roles, and GET https://api.naut.so/v1/projects/chaingpt returns the same rows in JSON at 5 credits. Verified Telegram, email and LinkedIn unlock on any paid NAUT plan, so you can start a 7-day trial and open the channels NAUT holds for those names.
Sources
- NAUT's own database, read on 4 November 2026, read-only: the trust score and rank for ChainGPT against 1,763 scored companies, the 7 flags, the 18 funding rows with their types, amounts and stored source URLs, and the 11 team rows with their titles, founder flags and X handles. Every count above was computed from those rows at that time.
- iq.wiki's profile of Ilan Rakhmanov, read on 4 November 2026, for his title as CEO and Founder since September 2022: https://iq.wiki/wiki/ilan-rakhmanov, with https://www.coingabbar.com/en/crypto-author/ilan-rakhmanov as a second source.
- ChainGPT's own blog post on its CertiK Skynet review, read on 4 November 2026, for the published audit: https://www.chaingpt.org/blog/chaingpt-on-skynet-certik-audit-review, with the ICO Drops profile at https://icodrops.com/chaingpt/ as a second source naming a Hacken report from April 2023.
- The project's X account at https://x.com/Chain_GPT and its own documentation at https://docs.chaingpt.org/overview/readme.md, read on 4 November 2026, for the official handle @chain_gpt.
- The funding total check: the ICO Drops profile at https://icodrops.com/chaingpt/, read on 4 November 2026, carries a smaller total over fewer rounds than NAUT's 18 rows and $4,091,197. The figures in this article are NAUT's record of funding events, flagged as such in the data note and in check 4.
- Each of the 18 funding rows on NAUT's record carries its own source URL to either https://cryptorank.io/price/chain-gpt or a round page on https://coinlaunch.space, which is the link to open before any single row goes into a model.