Degraded snapshot
A market snapshot in which 4 or more of the 8 weight-bearing market signals are null. Cron jobs that send email alerts refuse to fire on a degraded snapshot · this prevents Galaxy Mind from broadcasting decisions based on the all-null fallback (score=50, tier=WARM) during multi-day upstream outages.
How to read it
Degraded means too many upstream feeds failed at once for the verdict to be trustworthy: four or more of the eight weight-bearing market signals returned null. The math still produces a number, but the site treats it as a placeholder, not a reading. When you see the degraded banner, the right read is 'data outage', not 'neutral market'.
On Galaxy Mind
The degraded flag is wired end to end: /stack, /treasuries, and /float show an honesty banner, every public API response carries a degraded boolean, the MCP tools pass it through to AI assistants, and all the alert crons refuse to fire on a degraded snapshot so no email or push ever broadcasts the fallback score.
Context
The rule exists because the all-null fallback is score 50, tier WARM, which looks exactly like a real mixed-market verdict. During one multi-day upstream outage that distinction is the difference between subscribers receiving fabricated signals and receiving silence. Silence won, permanently.