What is Standard & Paws (S&P) Rating Services?
On the surface, it is marketed by itself and members of the Berachain community as the gateway to the Berachain ecosystem. It is created by The Honey Jar, which is also itself marketed as the gateway to the Berachain ecosystem.
However, below the surface, it quickly devolves into nothing but a way for certain members of the Berachain ecosystem to take advantage of builders and personally gain.
First, let’s delve into what a ratings service is. We’ll use S&P Global to begin our understanding. S&P Global is a ratings service for the stock markets of the world. They provide opinions about credit risk with relation to publicly traded companies.
The concept for Standard & Paws is a project rating service. They have a proprietary ratings system which they use to assess projects in the Berachain ecosystem. This system is based upon points and metrics that Standard & Paws touts as a 150 point inspection of a project. These assessments are conducted by what are known as community assessors. Community assessors who routinely evaluate projects may earn the Community S&P Assessors designation.
The framework for the aforementioned 150 point inspection is as follows:
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Project Development
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Bullish Berachain
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Team, Background, & Organization
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Social & Community
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THJ Specific
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Non-Negotiable
According to The Honey Jar, these 6 sectors as they are called, rigorously assess various aspects of a project, ranging from its technical roadmap to community engagement, with a keen eye for potential red flags.
Allegedly to maintain objectivity, these S&P ratings are curated by the S&P community contributors. Any member may assess a project and apply his assessment to the review. Upon a successful submission, the assessment is given approval and is published on the S&P platform where it becomes accessible by any reader.
Sounds good right? Well, yeah. Until you delve into the ratings mechanics themselves and realize this is nothing more than a poor ratings shop designed to pad the pockets of The Honey Jar’s team.
Next, let’s delve into the submission process. To submit your project to Standard & Paws, a form must be filled. This form contains two pages of questions. These questions are as follows:
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Project Name
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Project Website
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Discord Server
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X
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Point of Contact
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How many team members are on the team
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What are their roles
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Have you founded any projects before
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How long have you been part of the Berachain ecosystem
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Current project status
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Submit links to tokenomics, roadmaps, whitepapers
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Has the project done any fundraising (NFT mint included)
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Link to treasury
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Has the project conducted an audit or planning to do one in the short term
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Or put up a bug bounty
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Are there any supplemental materials that you would like us to consider when assessing your project
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Do you have any questions or concerns
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Is your project a THJ Partner
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Have you joined our Discord
These are extremely mundane questions, but questions, nonetheless.
Moving on, let’s delve into the Community Assessor Program. For every approved assessment, the community assessor receives a 🐾Paw Badge. By accruing 5 badges you can become an “official community assessor (OCA)”. Earning 10 badges provides you with OCA+, while 20 badges provides you with OCA++.
The first 42 community assessors also have the opportunity to earn HoneyJar Gen2 NFTs. Community assessors also receive perks such as Discord roles, access to a private chat with other assessors, a special role in the future THJ DAO, and, bonus rewards from THJ and its partners.
Additionally, there is a competition for the S&P Season, in which, community assessors can submit assessments on an on-going basis and extend their streak. The highest scoring assessors will receive awards at the end of the season.
As you can astutely tell, there is a clear incentive for community assessors to assess projects. This incentive is a funnel which promises entrance to a DAO and rewards based on the community assessors quantity of assessments.
Continuing onward, let’s delve into the current S&P assessments that have been completed. The list is short, with 14 entries as of January 20, 2024
F in the chat before I continue. Time to ruffle all the feathers.
Standard & Paws is positioning itself as the gatekeeper of the Berachain ecosystem, yet, it can’t even gate itself. Where do I begin? Perhaps with the abysmal consistency across project ratings. How about the fact that points are arbitrarily assigned without a clear method? Shall we discuss how projects #4, #7 and #8 have received 103, 117 and 131 points which mean they are double AA to triple AAA projects? What? What about the erroneous grammatical errors throughout these assessments? Let’s skip all of that and hone in on the most disingenuous aspect.
The entire premise of The Honey Jar and Standard & Paws is to provide favourable ratings to curtain projects that give The Honey Jar perks such as token allocations, DAO seats, among other things. Free stuff = ratings, essentially.
What a complete and utterly useless gateway to the Berachain ecosystem. Completely hostile to builders. Projects like The Honey Jar are detrimental to Berachain’s success and these projects must be approached with the utmost sensitivity. Do not make any investment decisions using the information gathered or disseminated by The Honey Jar and/or Standard & Paws. It’s nothing but a scummy cash grab to twist builders into giving up what they’ve worked hard for in exchange for a completely meaningless rating.
Bullish on projects that aren’t rated by Standard & Paws.
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