What is audit grade and why does it matter?
Every receipt in your TrueStake account carries an Audit Grade — a label that tells you exactly what the number was verified against. The grade is not a quality score; it's a provenance statement. It answers: "How do we know this amount is correct?"
There are three grades. Which one your receipts carry depends on how you stake — specifically, whether TrueStake can verify the amount against your own on-chain events, a protocol Oracle, or only public data sources.
The three grades
Chain Derived
Your amount is verified against an on-chain event you originated.
For Solo stakers and Hosted stakers: every receipt corresponds to a real on-chain settlement — a sweep withdrawal, a fee-recipient payment, or a user-triggered withdrawal — pulled from your own Reth and Lighthouse node data and reconciled to the wei. The raw upstream API payload is preserved verbatim as evidence. The audit trail runs all the way back to the blockchain, with no intermediary interpretation.
Oracle Derived
Your amount is verified against the staking protocol's own chain-published Oracle report.
For Liquid stakers (stETH, rETH, etc.): TrueStake reconciles your receipt to the wei against the protocol's on-chain Oracle accounting — the Lido Oracle, Rocket Pool network balances contract, or equivalent. The Oracle report payload is preserved as evidence. The audit trail terminates at the protocol's Oracle multisig, not at your own node. Liquid Staking is coming in a future TrueStake release.
Best-Effort
The most accurate record constructible from public data, with all sources and confidence levels preserved.
For staking setups where neither a node nor a protocol Oracle is available, TrueStake still builds the best possible record from public sources and flags the confidence level per data source. Used for future staking topologies not yet covered by the higher grades. Not available in v1.
Why the grade matters for your tax records
Your CPA needs to know not just what the number is, but where it came from. A tax return supported by Chain Derived receipts — amounts reconciled to the wei against your own on-chain settlement events, with raw payloads preserved — is fundamentally more defensible than one built from a provider's PDF statement or an exchange CSV export.
TrueStake's brand promise is: we deliver the best audit grade your staking setup allows, and we name it explicitly. You never have to guess what the number was based on.
Which grade do I get?
It depends on how you stake:
- Solo staker (you run your own node) → Chain Derived
- Hosted staker (you own the withdrawal credentials; a provider operates the node) → Chain Derived
- Liquid staker (you hold stETH, rETH, etc.) → Oracle Derived (coming soon)
Questions? Email support@truestake.io.