The grading system behind every compound page on Vallydia — explained in full, so you can judge our judgments.
Most of the peptide and compound information online is marketing dressed as science. A vendor selling something has every incentive to call it "proven," "powerful," and "clinically validated" — regardless of what the evidence actually says.
We do the opposite. Every compound in our register gets an honest letter grade per outcome — including the grades that hurt. If a popular compound has no human data, we say so. If a mechanism is elegant but never tested, we grade the elegance and the absence separately. If the best-selling use of a compound is the least supported, our grade says exactly that.
This page explains how we arrive at those grades, so our judgments are transparent and you can hold us to them. A grade you can't interrogate is just another marketing claim.
Our grade answers one question: how strong is the evidence that this compound produces this specific effect in humans?
That's it. The grade is not a measure of:
A compound can be fascinating, widely sold, and mechanistically beautiful — and still earn an F, if the human evidence isn't there. Those are different things, and we keep them separate on purpose.
Borrowing the logic used by rigorous evidence reviewers, every grade weighs two independent dimensions:
1. Consistency of the evidence — do the studies agree? One promising study is a hint. Ten studies pointing the same way is a signal. Studies that contradict each other, or a single unreplicated result, pull the grade down no matter how striking the headline number.
2. Magnitude and quality of the evidence — how good is the proof, and how big is the effect? A well-powered randomized controlled trial in humans is worth far more than a mouse study or a test-tube result. A large, clinically meaningful effect matters more than a statistically-significant-but-tiny one. The strongest evidence is human, controlled, replicated, and adequately powered.
A high grade requires both: consistent findings and high-quality evidence. Strong consistency built on weak evidence (e.g. many mouse studies, zero human trials) caps the grade. A single strong trial that hasn't been replicated is likewise limited.
| Grade | Meaning |
|---|---|
| A | Strong, consistent human evidence — typically multiple high-quality trials, or approved-drug-level proof, for this specific outcome. |
| B | Good human evidence — solid trials pointing the same way, but with some limitation (fewer studies, phase not yet pivotal, or a caveat). |
| C | Mixed, modest, or early human evidence — a real signal, but inconsistent, small, or not yet confirmed. |
| D | Weak or negative human evidence — tested and underwhelming, tested for something other than the claim, or evidence limited to poor-quality sources. |
| F | No supporting human evidence for this claim — or the claim was tested at a pivotal level and failed. |
Two things about this scale matter:
Marketing-claim rows: how D and F divide. Some rows in our tables grade a promise rather than an effect — the sentence the industry puts on the box ("as effective as retinol", "boosts collagen", "FDA-approved"). These rows carry the base "Marketing claim", and for them a single question sets the grade: does any human data exist for this specific promise?
C stays available where genuine human evidence tests the promise itself and is merely mixed or early. And a promise that was properly tested in humans and failed remains an F — the known negative described above; measuring humans does not rescue it to D.
The trap this closes: evidence for the ingredient is not evidence for the promise. A well-studied ingredient can still earn an F on a claim its own studies never tested.
This is the single most important thing to understand about our system, because it's where honest grading and marketing diverge most sharply.
A compound doesn't have one grade. It has a grade for each thing it's claimed to do.
The same molecule can be:
Real examples from our register make this concrete:
If we collapsed each compound into a single grade, we'd have to pick one — and any single number would mislead. So our pages show a per-outcome table, and where a page shows a single headline grade, it reflects the compound's leading use (the primary or most-marketed application), not the highest grade in the table. We never let a compound's best-supported minor use disguise the weakness of its main selling point.
We grade down for things marketing grades up. Specifically:
To keep the register safe and firmly on the right side of the line, our compound pages never include:
These exclusions aren't limitations of our research; they're a design choice. A reference that documents evidence honestly does not need to hand out a how-to.
For every graded outcome we work from primary and authoritative sources — peer-reviewed trials, systematic reviews and meta-analyses, regulatory decisions, and the original discovery literature — in preference to secondary summaries or vendor material. Where sources conflict, we note the conflict rather than pick the flattering side. Where a claim can't be sourced, we don't make it.
The representative sources behind each grade are listed on the compound's page. We'd rather show our work than ask you to trust us.
Every grade here is built from the published evidence by the method set out on this page, and written by one person: Yakiv Bilenko, who also runs Vallydia. There is no editorial board, no panel, and no independent clinical reviewer — not pending, not promised. What the method offers instead is that the reasoning for each grade is written out and the sources are listed, so a disagreement can be checked against the evidence rather than settled by a credential.
We should be straight about something a reader deserves to know before weighing a grade: Vallydia sells its own cosmetic serums. Some of the ingredients we grade — peptides, copper peptides, hyaluronic acid, niacinamide — sit in the same categories as products we sell. A grade on a competing ingredient is therefore not the verdict of a disinterested party, and we will not pretend otherwise.
What we do about it is hold ourselves to the same rule we apply to everyone else. Our own ingredients are graded on identical terms, and the record shows it — our copper-peptide serum's active is graded no more generously than the peptides it competes with, and where a competitor's evidence is stronger, its grade is higher. The method on this page is applied without exception, to our shelf and to everyone else's. We disclose the interest rather than bury it, because a disclosed interest is a fact you can weigh, and a hidden one is a reason not to trust the rest.
We also grade the marketing promise attached to an ingredient separately from the ingredient itself, and those promise-grades are often low. Where an ingredient is sold under a supplier's trade name — Matrixyl, Argireline, Syn-Ake and others — that name is used only to identify the ingredient under discussion. It implies no affiliation with, or endorsement by, the trademark owner, and a low promise-grade is a judgement on the evidence for the claim, not a statement about the company that makes it.
We grade evidence, not enthusiasm. We grade each use separately, so a compound's strongest point can't hide its weakest. We grade down for the things marketing grades up — animal-only data, untested mechanisms, hype that outruns proof. And we show our sources so you can check us.
If that means our grades are less exciting than a vendor's, that's the point. An honest F is more useful than a dishonest A.
This methodology applies to every compound page in the register. If you think we've graded something wrong — too generously or too harshly — that's exactly the kind of scrutiny this page is meant to invite.
A neutral reference and a lawful-lane shop. Information for those who seek it — never promotion.
This site provides neutral scientific reference and sells only products lawful in your region. Nothing here is medical advice, a recommendation, or an offer to supply unapproved medicines. No dosing or administration is published for research compounds. Cosmetic peptides per Regulation (EC) 1223/2009. Unapproved injectable peptides are neither sold nor advertised in the EU (Directive 2001/83/EC, Title VIII). © 2026 Vallydia.