We prove that, for$C^{1}$-generic diffeomorphisms, if the periodic orbits contained in a homoclinic class$H(p)$have all their Lyapunov exponents bounded away from zero, then$H(p)$must be (uniformly) hyperbolic. This is in the spirit of the works on the stability conjecture, but with a significant difference that the homoclinic class$H(p)$is not known isolated in advance, hence the ‘weak’ periodic orbits created by perturbations near the homoclinic class have to be guaranteed strictly inside the homoclinic class. In this sense the problem is of an ‘intrinsic’ nature, and the classical proof of the stability conjecture does not work. In particular, we construct in the proof several perturbations which are not simple applications of the connecting lemmas.