DeFi has a transparency problem when it comes to providing information on how capital is actually deployed. Vault products are often packaged as a simple "one click" experience while the actual risks are obfuscated in a way which makes it impossible for depositors to evaluate. Counterparty exposure, offchain strategies, hidden leverage and third-party fund managers are rarely disclosed to the average retail user. That lack of visibility goes unnoticed until a sharp market move triggers a liquidation cascade and causes a bank run event.
The past few months have provided several relevant examples:
Stream disclosed a ~$93m loss tied to an external fund manager and paused deposits and withdrawals. Once withdrawals were paused, xUSD's price plummeted on DEX's, as that was the only way for the users to exit.
The users were only able to see the onchain wallets shown on Stream's DeBank, while a significant portion of the backing was deployed offchain with no independent verification. As a result, depositors had no way to assess the true solvency of the protocol or the risks they were exposed to.
Current xUSD price: $0.034
Following xUSD's insolvency, Elixir announced it would wind down deUSD after it became clear that a significant portion of the backing had been lent out to the Stream team. This exposure was not disclosed to users beforehand, despite deUSD being positioned as a market-neutral asset. The team has enabled 1:1 USDC redemptions and made the holders whole, however Elixir later shut down the protocol and transferred control to the community following the incident.
Even if a token appears “fully-backed”, backing that is lent out to a third-party can automatically be considered lost.
Current deUSD price: $0.01
USDX is another example of how quickly a depeg can happen when users have no way to independently assess a synthetic dollar's backing. After the crash on 10/10, questions began to surface about whether losses had occurred within the basis trade strategy backing USDX, but there was no onchain data or external verification to confirm the state of the positions.
With no visibility into collateral solvency, uncertainty quickly spread. As redemptions weren't being facilitated and no communication was provided by the team, users rushed to secondary markets to exit, causing a rapid selloff and pushing the price well below its intended value.
Current USDX price: $0.043
When xUSD and deUSD lost their pegs, the impact spread immediately through lending markets. Positions backed by these assets were forced liquidated as collateral values dropped, leading to increased withdrawals, which sharply pushed utilization and borrow rates higher across affected vaults.
Many users had supplied assets like USDC and USDT into lending markets that were used as loans for xUSD and deUSD looping. When the collateral value dropped, borrowers stopped repaying, leaving lenders effectively trapped. Even though they had supplied stable assets, withdrawals became impossible because the collateral supporting those loans had lost value and could no longer be liquidated in an orderly way.
This is what happens when risk is hidden and not fully disclosed. When visibility is absent, an asset's price becomes the only signal left.
Accountable provides infrastructure that allows protocols to prove their assets, liabilities and solvency using verifiable data from custodians and trading venues. Instead of relying on self-reported dashboards or periodic attestations, Accountable connects directly to data sources and produces cryptographic proofs that reflect the current state of funds and positions. This allows users to verify backing and exposure in real time without relying on trust or manual disclosures.
YieldApp is the first yield marketplace built on top of DVN. Every opportunity from borrower vaults to structured credit strategies is backed by live, cryptographically verifiable data. Designed for allocators, YieldApp makes it easy to discover, assess and deploy into yield opportunities you can trust.
Vault as a Service is a modular infrastructure for launching and managing tokenized yield and credit offerings. Each vault is fully customizable, from access rules and interest models to collateral terms, and backed by real-time proofs from DVN. Built for institutions seeking transparency and control to confidently attract allocators through verified offerings.
DVN is a neutral infrastructure layer that enables institutions to share real-time financial reporting of assets and liabilities across wallets, exchanges, custodians and banks without revealing sensitive information like API keys, wallet addresses or trading strategies. Reports can be shared privately (peer to peer), semipublicly, or fully onchain through oracle feeds, with cryptographic proofs embedded by default.
Pre-deposits are open until Jan 8 for the Aegis Yield Vault on Monad.
The vault is built via Accountable's VaaS and limits exposure exclusively to Aegis assets and predefined conservative strategies, with all positions and balances verifiable through the DVN.
The operational flow is:
A user deposits USDC into the vault on Monad
The USDC is bridged to Ethereum
USDC is used to mint YUSD
Most YUSD is staked for sYUSD to earn native yield
A smaller allocation is utilized in the YUSD/sYUSD Curve liquidity pool to support deep liquidity
The user experience remains a single click deposit, while the vault manages the execution steps in the background.
Below is a breakdown of what users gain exposure to by depositing into the vault:
YUSD is a BTC backed delta-neutral digital dollar. The core of the strategy is utilizing BTC-M perpetual futures. BTC is held on custodians while offsetting perpetual short positions are opened to hedge its price and earn funding rate payments, which become the yield source.
Collateral balances and hedge positions are made visible through Accountable’s Proof of Reserves dashboard, allowing users to see how the BTC collateral is managed.
sYUSD is the yield-bearing version of YUSD. When users stake YUSD for sYUSD, their balance begins to accrue yield generated by the underlying strategy. The value of sYUSD increases over time as yield accumulates, reflecting the performance of the strategy while keeping exposure tied to the same underlying asset.
YUSD and sYUSD are deployed into a Curve liquidity pool, a widely used and established protocol for stable asset trading. The pool is designed to support efficient entry and exit under normal market conditions.
Exposure to the Curve pool is limited and used only to support liquidity, where pricing and liquidity are determined by pool balances and trading activity.
Aegis generates yield by using BTC-M perpetual contracts. Margin and PnL are settled in BTC, which allows the strategy to hold spot collateral and hedge asset price exposure. This avoids reliance on stablecoin based settlement, reduces counterparty exposure risk and provides access to deeper liquidity in BTC derivatives markets.
The strategy maintains offsetting positions so price movements are neutralized, while funding rate payments accumulate over time and are the yield source for sYUSD. Position sizing, margin buffers and liquidation thresholds are actively managed to keep exposure within defined risk limits and ensure funding rate revenue remains stable.
Aegis uses institutional custody and off-exchange settlement for its BTC holdings. This includes utilizing Copper's ClearLoop, to reduce CEX counterparty exposure during trade execution and collateral management.
Aegis also maintains an insurance fund designed as an additional buffer for negative funding rate periods or any potential losses incurred by the strategy.
These components are designed to reduce the surface area where depositors take uncompensated risk.
Learn more about the custody model used by Aegis:
Depositors receive 4 return streams, each tracked independently:
sYUSD native APY
MON incentives
ACC points
Aegis points
This strategy is designed to produce double-digit returns while maintaining a conservative risk profile.
Depositing into the vault is very simple:
Go to the vault page
Connect your EVM wallet
Review, accept and sign the MLA
Enter a USDC amount on Monad (keep some MON for gas)
Approve USDC
Sign the deposit transaction
After that, the vault executes the bridging, minting and routing while the user accrues yield and additional incentives.
Many recent DeFi failures could have been mitigated if users had the ability to verify where collateral was held or the health of underlying positions. These failures typically occurred when exposure was obscured, leverage was embedded in ways users could not see and collateral could not be independently assessed. When users had no way to verify how assets were deployed or how positions were structured, risk accumulated undisclosed, until redemptions were paused and available liquidity in secondary pools was depleted, leading to the assets depegging.
Aegis is a protocol built to issue transparent dollar assets, designed to withstand any market environment. The goal is to offer a stablecoin with a transparent yield-generating strategy, strict risk limits and collateral composition that can be monitored continuously.
The Aegis Proof of Reserves dashboard is powered by Accountable and is intended to give users visibility into collateral value and hedging positions with ZK-proof based verification. Users can review reserve composition, overcollateralization ratios, supply and delta-neutrality indicators, with data sourced from custodians and exchanges, and proven through Accountable’s verification framework.
In an environment where stablecoins and yield products have failed due to hidden leverage and unclear backing, the Aegis Yield Vault provides verifiable asset data, enforces defined risk controls and reduces uncertainty around how funds are managed.
Choose Aegis, because your money deserves better.