How to vet a crypto startup: 5 flags, 40 of 10,262 carry 3

How to vet a crypto startup before you pitch it, in short: open its NAUT page, read the 5 flags the record carries (a code audit, KYC, a sale whitelist, a bug bounty and a shipped product), then read the trust score behind them and check whether that score came from an analyst or from a scrape. NAUT tracks 10,262 live crypto organizations as of 5 November 2026 and flags 293 of them for a code audit, 186 for KYC and 172 for a token sale whitelist, and only 40 companies carry all 3 of those compliance flags at once.

Data note. Every count here was read from NAUT's own database on 5 November 2026, read-only. The universe is the 10,262 live, published organization rows, of which 6,955 are project rows. A flag is counted only where the stored field is true, so a blank means NAUT holds no record of that check rather than that the check never happened. Trust scores are rounded to 2 decimals from the stored value. 10 companies are used as worked examples, and 5 of their stored descriptions were put to an outside source on 5 November 2026: 4 came back confirmed (Hyperliquid, Kaito, Pump.fun and Falcon Finance), and the 5th, on NAUT's stored line for Yuga Labs, came back contradicted, so the detail it rested on is left out of this article. The 5 remaining example rows (Mitosis, Taiko, OpenEden, Sats Terminal and KiloEx) were not put to an outside source. NAUT Research wrote it.

How to vet a crypto startup in 5 flags, before the first message

A pitch lands better when you already know what the other side has built and what it has been checked on. That is the whole job of a crypto due diligence pass at this stage: 10 minutes on the record, before a name goes into a sequence.

• Read the flags first. They are stored fields, so they answer fast and they say what kind of company you are writing to.
• Separate the 3 compliance flags (audit, KYC, whitelist) from the 2 product flags (bug bounty, shipped MVP). 293 companies carry an audit flag and 494 carry a shipped-product flag, so a working product is the more common signal of the 2 groups.
• Read the trust score second, and read its 5 parts rather than the headline number. A company can score 9.23 on fundamentals and 2.06 on community activity inside 1 score.
• Check where the row came from. 4,389 of the 10,262 rows are marked analyst-reviewed and 2,946 carry a scraped-only marker, and those 2 markers carry different weight.
• Read the company's own description last, as a cross-check on everything above. It is the field most likely to be out of date, and the 10 example rows below include 1 whose stored line an outside source contradicted.

Which checks does NAUT record, and how many companies carry each?

5 flags, plus the trust score and the source marker behind them. The audit flag means a smart-contract or code audit is on record, the KYC flag that the team or token sale ran know-your-customer checks, and the whitelist flag that token sale access was gated behind a whitelist. The 2 product flags are a live bug-bounty program, which is self-reported and so the weaker signal, and a working product shipped rather than a deck. A numeric trust score is a score out of 10 with the 5-part breakdown under it. Each row below is a count of live, published organization rows on 5 November 2026.

Check	On NAUT	Example
Code audit	293	Hyperliquid
KYC	186	Kaito
Sale whitelist	172	Mitosis
Bug bounty	452	Hyperliquid
Shipped product	494	Hyperliquid
All 3 compliance flags	40	Falcon Finance
Numeric trust score	1,763	KiloEx

The 2 product flags are the common ones and the 3 compliance flags are the rare ones, which is the first thing a vetting pass should know: on this record, a shipped product is 2.7 times more often on file than a KYC check.

Do the flags predict a good project, or just a thorough one?

They predict process, and process is worth knowing before a pitch. They do not stand in for quality, and NAUT's own numbers say so from both ends.

• Of the 40 companies carrying all 3 compliance flags, 20 carry a numeric trust score, and those 20 average 5.54 out of 10. 7 of the 40 sit in the high or very high trust tier.
• 14 companies sit in the high trust tier while carrying none of the 3 compliance flags. Pump.fun, Yuga Labs and Sats Terminal are 3 of them.
• So the flags and the score answer different questions. Treat a full set of compliance flags as a sign the team has been through a process with lawyers and auditors in the room, which matters if you are selling compliance tooling, custody or a listing route.

Here is what that looks like across the 10 worked examples, every value read from the same NAUT rows on 5 November 2026. The compliance column names which of the audit, KYC and whitelist flags each row carries.

Company	Compliance	Trust score	Tier
Hyperliquid	Audit only	7.46	Very high
Falcon Finance	All 3	7.12	Medium
Kaito	KYC only	7.07	High
Mitosis	Whitelist only	6.96	Medium
Taiko	All 3	6.41	High
OpenEden	All 3	6.30	High
KiloEx	All 3	6.11	Medium
Pump.fun	None of the 3	None stored	High
Yuga Labs	None of the 3	None stored	High
Sats Terminal	None of the 3	None stored	High

7 of the 10 carry a numeric trust score and 3 carry a tier with no number behind it, which is the kind of gap to notice before you quote a score to anyone. 4 of the 10 carry all 3 compliance flags, and their scores run from 6.11 to 7.12, below the 7.46 on Hyperliquid, which carries 1 of the 3 compliance flags.

Ranked by NAUT's stored trust score, rounded to 2 decimals. Pump.fun, Yuga Labs and Sats Terminal carry no numeric score on their rows, so they are out of this chart and named above instead.

How to vet a crypto startup's trust score in 5 parts

A crypto trust score on NAUT is 1 number with 5 categories under it, and the categories are where the useful detail sits. 1,763 of the 10,262 live organizations carry a numeric score, which is 17.2%, and all 1,763 carry the 5-part breakdown, so when a score exists you can always open it.

KiloEx is the worked example, because it carries all 3 compliance flags, both product flags and a score of 6.11. Ranked by its own category scores, high to low:

That spread is the point. A single 6.11 hides a 9.23 on fundamentals and a 2.06 on community and development activity, and those 2 numbers point at 2 different conversations: 1 with a team that has strong backers and thin public activity, and 1 with a team in the opposite spot. The crypto startup red flags worth acting on live in the low categories, not in the headline.

How to vet a crypto startup before a cold pitch: what a BD team does with this

The flags sort a target list faster than any amount of reading does, because they are stored fields and they map onto what you sell.

• Selling audits, compliance tooling or custody: the 293 audit-flagged and 186 KYC-flagged companies have already bought in that category once, and the 40 with all 3 flags have bought in 3.
• Selling growth, community or market making: the 14 high-tier companies with none of the 3 compliance flags, and any row scoring low on Social and Development the way KiloEx does at 2.06, are the ones where that budget is unspent.
• Selling to a team that has actually shipped: start with the 494 rows carrying a shipped-product flag rather than the 452 with a bug bounty, which is self-reported.
• Before you send anything, open the company page and take the names off it. The flags tell you the company is worth a message, and the page tells you who reads it.

What this tells a founder who is raising

The same record an investor or a BD team reads is the one your page shows, so it is worth knowing what it currently says about you.

• 3 of the 5 flags are things you can put on the record by doing them: an audit, a KYC process and a whitelisted sale. 293, 186 and 172 companies carry those today, out of 10,262.
• A missing flag reads as missing information rather than as a failure, and it is the most fixable thing on the page.
• A numeric score is the rarer asset: 1,763 of 10,262 rows carry one. If yours does, read the 5 categories and work on the lowest, the way a 2.06 on Social and Development would read next to a 9.23 on fundamentals.
• Your own description is the field a reader cross-checks first. 1 of the 5 descriptions checked for this article did not survive an outside source, which is the cheapest kind of error to find and fix before a pitch meeting.

What the outside check found on 4 of the 10

5 stored descriptions went to an outside source on 5 November 2026 and 4 came back confirmed.

• Hyperliquid, audit-flagged and the highest score of the 10 at 7.46, is "a decentralized exchange specializing in perpetual futures trading, built atop its own dedicated layer-1 network" on decrypt.co.
• Kaito, KYC-flagged and scoring 7.07, is described on transak.com as follows: "Kaito is an AI-powered search engine and information platform specifically designed for the cryptocurrency space."
• Falcon Finance, 1 of the 40 with all 3 compliance flags, runs a collateralization protocol whose own site says "Mint USDf, an overcollateralized synthetic dollar, by depositing eligible liquid assets."
• Pump.fun, high-tier with none of the 3 compliance flags, is a Solana token launch platform used mostly for memecoins, per coingecko.com and kucoin.com.

The 5th check, on NAUT's stored line for Yuga Labs, came back contradicted, so this article uses only the flags and tier on that row and leaves its stored description aside. That is the worked version of the last step: a flag is a stored field, and a description is a sentence someone wrote once.

Related reading on NAUT: How to qualify a sales lead: 5 checks, 46 of 167 teams pass and Crypto lead scoring: 5 points, 39 of 51 teams score 4 or more.

Can you pull this data through the NAUT API?

Yes, for the company records behind this article. One company and the people on its row come back from GET https://api.naut.so/v1/projects/falcon-finance, and a list to screen comes back from GET https://api.naut.so/v1/projects?q=perp dex&limit=100, each call 5 credits with Authorization: Bearer $NAUT_KEY, against the 3,000 credits on the $49 Essential plan (docs, pricing). The flag and trust score counts above were read from NAUT's database rather than from an API call. Verified Telegram, email and LinkedIn for the people on those company pages unlock on any paid NAUT plan, so start a 7-day trial if you need to reach them.

How to vet a crypto startup FAQ

What should I check before pitching a crypto startup?

Check the 5 flags on its NAUT page (code audit, KYC, sale whitelist, bug bounty, shipped product), then the trust score and its 5 categories, then whether the row is analyst-reviewed. On 5 November 2026 NAUT flagged 293 of its 10,262 live crypto organizations for a code audit, 186 for KYC and 172 for a sale whitelist, and that is the short answer to what to check before pitching a crypto startup.

How many crypto companies pass all 3 compliance checks on NAUT?

40 of the 10,262 live crypto organizations NAUT tracked on 5 November 2026 carry the audit, KYC and whitelist flags together, including Falcon Finance, Taiko, OpenEden and KiloEx. 20 of those 40 carry a numeric trust score, and those 20 average 5.54 out of 10.

Does a high trust score mean a crypto startup has been audited?

No. On 5 November 2026, 14 companies on NAUT sat in the high trust tier while carrying none of the audit, KYC or whitelist flags, among them Pump.fun, Yuga Labs and Sats Terminal. A crypto trust score and a compliance flag are 2 separate fields, and 1,763 of the 10,262 rows carry a numeric score at all.

Where can I find these flagged crypto companies and the people to contact there?

On NAUT's company pages, which carry the flags, the trust score and the named people on each row, and through the API: GET https://api.naut.so/v1/projects/kiloex returns 1 of the 40 companies that carry all 3 compliance flags, with its team. Verified Telegram, email and LinkedIn for those people unlock on any paid NAUT plan, so start a 7-day trial to open the channels.

What is the difference between a bug bounty flag and an audit flag?

An audit flag means a smart-contract or code audit is on record, and 293 of NAUT's 10,262 live crypto organizations carry one. A bug bounty flag means a live bug-bounty program, which is self-reported and therefore a weaker signal, and 452 companies carry it.

Sources

• NAUT's own database, read on 5 November 2026, read-only: the 10,262 live published organization rows, their audit, KYC, whitelist, bug bounty and shipped-product flags, their trust scores and tiers, the 5-part score breakdown and the source marker on each row. Every count above was computed from those rows at that time.
• Hyperliquid's description, checked on 5 November 2026 against decrypt.co/resources/what-hyperliquid-decentralized-exchange-blockchain, with kucoin.com/learn/web3/what-is-hyperliquid-hype-decentralized-perpetual-exchange as a second page.
• Kaito's description, checked on 5 November 2026 against transak.com/blog/what-is-kaito-ai, with bitget.com/academy/kaito-crypto-ai-token-explained-price-surge-2025 as a second page.
• Pump.fun's description, checked on 5 November 2026 against coingecko.com/learn/pump-fun-guide-how-to-create-your-own-memecoins and kucoin.com/blog/en-pump-fun-the-leading-solana-meme-coin-launch-platform-generator.
• Falcon Finance's description, checked on 5 November 2026 against the company's own site, falcon.finance.