What is Assay?

Think of a jeweller’s hallmark. A small office tests the gold and stamps the result on the metal. You don’t have to trust the seller: the stamp says who checked it and what they found.

Assay does something similar for tokens on Stellar that say they are backed by real money, bonds or loans. It doesn’t decide whether a token is good or bad. It records what the issuer publishes about its reserves, when, and where it says so, with a link to the source every time.

The parts

The board (assay.wtf). A public page for every Stellar asset that claims backing. It shows whether the issuer links a reserve report, whether the link works, how old the report is, and what it says. You can read it without an account.
The registry. A smart contract on Stellar where approved checkers, called attestors, post reserve reports. Each report says how much is held in reserve, how many tokens are owed, and the date the figures are true for.
The guard. A smart contract that lending protocols can ask one question: is this asset healthy right now? It answers yes or no, with a reason. If reports are missing, out of date, or show a shortfall, the answer is no.
The standard. A draft Stellar standard for reserve reports a computer can read, signed by a key the issuer lists. Plain PDF links keep working.

The board works on Stellar’s main network today. The registry and the guard run on testnet, Stellar’s practice network, while they are built and tested.

Who it is for

Token holders and analysts who want to see the backing claims in one place, with sources.
Issuers and attestors who want their reserve reports to be read by software, not only by people.
Lending protocols that accept these tokens as collateral and need to stop new lending when the backing can’t be shown.

What Assay is not

Assay is not an audit and not a rating. It does not say an issuer is trustworthy. It shows what was published and when, and it never fills in a number that wasn’t published: missing information shows as unknown. Read more in Limits.