Over the past months, we’ve shared our vision for Makina, The DeFi Execution Engine, through long-form writing on Mirror. These posts helped us introduce the protocol, outline our principles, and begin shaping the community around what we’re building.

As Makina grows, we want our communication channels to grow with us. To make our writing more accessible, discoverable, and consistent, we’re migrating from Mirror to Substack.

👉 You can now subscribe to our new publication here: https://substack.com/@makinafi

Why the Move?

• Accessibility: Substack offers a cleaner experience for readers and an easier subscription process.

• Distribution: Direct inbox delivery ensures you never miss updates, from deep dives on our technical architecture to market insights and launch announcements.

• Community Growth: Substack enables us to reach beyond the crypto-native audience, while still staying grounded in our crypto-native values.

What to Expect

Our Substack will continue to be the place for:

• Technical Architecture & Research: How Makina’s modular execution engine is built to scale onchain strategies.

• Principles & Philosophy: Our stance on fair launch, sustainable yield, and building with crypto-native integrity.

• Launch Updates: Progress on TVL growth, fund performance, partnerships, and the road to TGE.

• Market Perspectives: Insights from our Operators and Risk Managers on the evolving DeFi landscape.

Stay Connected

• Substack: https://substack.com/@makinafi

• X (Twitter): x.com/makinafi

• Discord for Ticketing: discord.gg/makinafi

• Telegram Community Chat: t.me/makinafinance

At Makina, we’re solving that issue by building a programmable execution engine that lets operators deploy and manage strategies across Ethereum, L2s, and beyond.

But to make true multichain execution work, you need more than smart contracts.

You need messaging infrastructure that's fast, secure, and verifiable.

That’s why we’ve integrated Wormhole. Here's how it powers our system:

Verifiable Cross-Chain Accounting (via Wormhole Queries)
Makina strategies run through Calibers: modular components deployed on different chains that manage local positions and actions.

But for a strategy to stay on target, we need a real-time, cross-chain view of total assets under management (AUM). That’s where Wormhole’s Queries come in.

With Wormhole Queries, Makina can:

• Pull live AUM data from every Caliber

• Have that data inherit the security of Wormhole’s decentralized Guardian network

• Sync the results back to the Machine on the Hub chain, the primary coordinator for all execution

Secure Capital Transfers
Running a cross-chain strategy requires transferring assets between networks. Makina coordinates these transfers through Wormhole-signed messages, ensuring each step is authorized, trackable, and verifiable.

The process is straightforward:

• Scheduled by the Machine

• Authorized via a message hash

• Executed through a supported adapter

• Finalized on the destination chain

Every move is verifiable and enforced. No transfer occurs unless it’s proven, signed, and validated by Wormhole’s Guardian network through its core messaging layer, ensuring secure and reliable coordination across chains.

Multichain Strategy Tokens via NTT
When users deposit into a Makina strategy, they receive Machine Shares, which are ERC-20 tokens representing their position.

But what if they want to use those tokens on another chain?

Instead of wrapping, minting duplicates, or redeploying token contracts, Makina uses Wormhole’s Native Token Transfers (NTT) to move Machine Shares between chains natively.

Benefits of the Wormhole Integration
By building on Wormhole’s core messaging layer, Makina gains:

• Decentralized cross-chain communication: Signed and secured by Wormhole’s Guardian network

• Low-latency messaging and data syncing: Critical for coordinating both strategy and execution logic

• A modular foundation: Perfectly aligned with Makina’s architecture

The Bottom Line
DeFi isn’t just about composing protocols anymore, it's about executing strategies across chains with composability, precision, security, and control.

Makina enables that execution, leveraging Wormhole interoperability infrastructure.

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DeFi has brought markets onchain, but it hasn’t yet brought true asset management with it.

Despite the progress DeFi has made in lending, trading, and yield primitives, most onchain strategies remain shallow, rigid, or dangerously opaque. Protocols either over-index on single purpose vaults with limited flexibility, or they offer powerful execution without robust risk controls.

Makina reframes asset management not as a product but as a programmable system.

It’s not just another yield aggregation protocol, it’s the execution engine behind a new class of programmable, governable, and risk-managed onchain strategies.

From the ground up, Makina’s architecture is designed to:

• Maximize composability and security across chains.

• Enforce risk controls without sacrificing flexibility.

• Provide users with transparency, liquidity, and real ownership over their capital.

• Enable sophisticated capital allocators, from funds to AI agents, to operate efficiently.

In this post, we’ll walk through the core design of Makina:

How Machines, Calibers, Instructions, and Operators fit together, and why this modular foundation unlocks a fundamentally better model for onchain asset management.

Core Components of the Makina Protocol

Machines: Strategy-Specific Vaults

Makina defines the notion of a Machine as a strategy specific vault. The Machine is the main touch point for users. It handles minting and redeeming, share price calculation and the risk engine.

• The Machines are always deployed on the hub chain for global governance and accounting.

• It accepts one accounting token (e.g. USDC, WETH) for minting and redeeming.

• It issues ERC-20 Machine tokens representing shares in the strategy.

• It manages allocations to Calibers and orchestrates accounting.

• It hosts a Risk Policy that governs the strategy execution.

In the initial phase of the protocol, Machines must receive governance approval before activation.

Calibers: Cross-Chain Execution Environments

Calibers are isolated execution engines, deployed on any chain with bridging and oracle support. A Caliber:

• Holds funds, accounts for local positions, and interacts with external protocols.

• Only allows the Operator to execute pre-approved Instructions, signed and submitted with a proof.

• Communicates back to the Machine for accounting and risk reporting.

Each Caliber maintains:

• A local accounting token (1:1 with the Machine).

• A registry of base tokens and active positions.

Calibers validate every Instruction against an onchain Merkle root of pre-approved Instructions.

Operators: Strategists with Defined Mandates

Each Machine has one Operator responsible for managing the strategy execution. Operators:

• Execute Instructions to allocate capital within the defined Mandate.

• Earn management and performance fees tied to NAV growth.

• Must comply with the Risk Policy. They are required to post a bond at risk of slashing in the event of violating a rule of the Risk Policy.

Operators can be humans, DAOs, or agentic systems but they can only operate within a pre-defined ruleset, enforced onchain.

Risk Manager: Protecting Machine Tokens Holders’ Interests

Each Machine has a designated Risk Manager, responsible for ensuring that the Operator acts honestly and in the best interests of Machine token holders. The Risk Manager performs the following functions:

• Managing updates to the Machine’s Mandate, approving new Instructions and Risk Policies.

• Triggering Recovery Mode when necessary.

• Maintaining the Machine’s risk parameters.

Security Council: Ensures Both the Operator and Risk Manager Act Honestly.

Each Machine has a designated Security Council, responsible for reviewing pending timelock transactions submitted by the Risk Manager.

At a high level, the Security Council has the following responsibilities:

• Reviewing updates to the Machine and vetoing any threatening update.

• Triggering Recovery Mode in response to security threats.

• Taking over control of the Machine in the event of a Recovery Mode.

Instructions & MakinaVM: Programmable Execution With Guardrails

Makina introduces a novel instruction model executed through MakinaVM, a generalized onchain execution engine.

• Instructions are Merkle-verified and atomically executed bundles of calls.

• Support math, conditionals, multicall logic and flash loans for more complex external protocol interactions.

• Only Instructions included in the current Merkle root set in the Caliber can be executed.

• The MakinaVM interprets and verifies each command with granularity down to calldata parameters.

This design enables composable, upgradable execution without giving Operators raw access to arbitrary contracts, and without requiring the deployment of custom smart contract adaptors for each external smart contract.

Risk Policy: Optimistic Constraints Enforced by the Community

Makina enforces risk management rules via a novel optimistic risk control system.

• Each position has a set of risk attributions, which can represent any type of risk exposure (e.g. Curve, USDC, Base, Stargate).

• Each attribution has a governance-set max exposure cap (expressed in basis points of TVL).

• Over-allocation can be challenged by anyone with a set of Merkle proofs.

• If valid, the Operator is slashed, and part of the bond is awarded to the challenger.

This mechanism ensures risk caps are respected with minimal overhead and without a need for real-time enforcement.

Share Price Engine: Cross-Chain Accounting for NAV

Makina calculates share price through periodic accounting phases:

• Calibers run accounting Instructions to size each position locally on each chain.

• Values are relayed to the Machine on the hub chain through Wormhole CCQ.

• The Machine collects data from all Calibers and computes aggregate NAV.

• Share price is then calculated as Net Asset Value divided by the number of outstanding shares.

• Performance and management fees are applied via share inflation and split between the Makina protocol and the Operator.

This mechanism of onchain accounting provides full transparency and reduces trust assumptions on the Operator.

Machine Tokens: Liquid ERC-20 Shares Representing Strategy Ownership

When users allocate capital to a Machine, they receive ERC-20 tokens that represent their pro-rata share of the strategy. Machine tokens:

• Are fully composable across DeFi.

• Are priced to reflect changes in NAV which are periodically updated.

• Enables secondary market liquidity, integrations, and DeFi-native UX.

Machine tokens are the user-facing representation of ownership in a secure, non-custodial strategy. They abstract all the complexities away from the user, who can just hold a single token and have full exposure to the underlying strategy.

In Summary: This architecture doesn’t just scale across strategies and chains, it scales across time.

Makina isn’t just another vault protocol, it’s a modular DeFi execution engine designed for the next era of capital allocation onchain.

By decoupling strategy design, execution, risk, and governance into composable components, Makina enables a fundamentally new approach. One where Operators run on enforceable mandates, users retain transparency and liquidity, and governance ensures guardrails without slowing down execution.

As markets mature, strategies evolve, and agents become more autonomous, Makina remains adaptable: from yield farming today to AI-managed treasuries and institutional-grade structured products tomorrow. Makina is the trust-minimized foundation for onchain asset management.

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1) Crypto-Native: True Fair launch, organic price discovery, driving value to the community.

• The best communities in the space have solidified loyalty by accruing value to early believers. Makina prioritizes community by ensuring fair token distribution with no price differences between the extremely small angel round (to bootstrap launch) and ICO, with an emphasis on no VC rounds. The ICO will be offered at a compelling value versus peer comparables.

• Makina is committed to the token valuation and price discovery being determined naturally and organically by the protocol performance, adoption, and revenue driven to token holders. Makina is a leader in the cash flow driven era of DeFi tokens.

• Makina will unabashedly avoid the traditional price manipulators such as excessive exchange fees and market maker allocations. By freeing up additional token liquidity across the network, Makina can support operators and liquidity provider incentives over a sustainable horizon.

2) Proven product with existing PMF.

• Makina differentiates itself by initially launching with proven, battle-tested yield strategies crafted by crypto-native professional risk managers, delivering immediate value. These flagship strategies are powered by proprietary infrastructure and software that have a successful multi-year track record and product-market fit.

3) Organic yield generation.

• Makina strategies prioritize real, onchain yield as the foundation of returns, supporting a more balanced and durable emissions schedule compared to that historically found in DeFi. $MAK incentives may moderately enhance yields for specific user actions and protocol participation, but will never serve as the primary (inorganic) yield driver, ensuring returns remain attractive, organic, and long-term sustainable.

4) Methodical scaling of capital.

• Total value locked (TVL) growth is strategically managed, above all, prioritizing sustainable yields to users and rigorous risk management. Governance-defined tiers will set clear limits on the scale of Machine capital allowances, fostering robust risk controls from launch.

Makina returns to crypto-native values through a community-driven strategy incorporating the lessons learned throughout the history of DeFi. By prioritizing organic yield generation, disciplined capital scaling, risk management, and fair token distribution, Makina is the standard for crypto-native asset management protocols.

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Why Makina?

Decentralized Finance is revolutionizing the financial landscape, unlocking new, diverse, investment opportunities for users to earn yield and manage capital onchain. As the industry evolves, sophisticated and highly profitable investment strategies are emerging, bringing institutional-grade returns to DeFi.

However, as navigating onchain capital allocation grows more complex and risky, it requires infrastructure that is flexible, future-proof, and secure—a singular execution engine with a broad set of features to simplify, improve, and optimize the execution of onchain strategies.

Makina provides infrastructure for risk-adjusted, high-performance yielding strategies through automated execution, cross-chain liquidity access, and real-time risk controls. By optimizing capital allocation and automating complex strategies, operators and AI Agents can leverage Makina’s execution engine to dynamically manage portfolios, adjust risk exposure, and efficiently deploy capital across chains and protocols—without the inefficiencies of manual execution or fragmented DeFi markets.

With Makina, anyone with a wallet can access tokenized strategies effortlessly, without requiring deep technical expertise or constant portfolio monitoring, benefiting from real-time yield optimization and built-in risk management—all while maintaining full custody and control.

How Does Makina Work?

Makina is designed to make it simple for users to access sophisticated DeFi strategies without actively managing execution.

1. Deposit Funds

   Users deposit assets into a Machine, a strategy-specific vault. Each Machine follows a predefined strategy with built-in risk management. In return, users receive Machine Tokens, which represent their share in the vault.

2. Automated Strategy Execution

   Once funds are deposited, Makina’s Operators, expert strategists or AI-driven agents, deploy assets across DeFi protocols to optimize yield. Execution is automated and constrained by strict risk controls.

3. Cross-Chain Operations

   Makina seamlessly bridges assets across different blockchains through Calibers, enabling access to the best opportunities while maintaining real-time accounting and security.

4. Monitor Performance

   Users can track portfolio performance, earnings, and risk exposure through a transparent dashboard, with revenue accruing continuously.

5. Withdraw Anytime

   Users can redeem their Machine Tokens for their share of the vault’s assets at any time, receiving their initial deposit plus any accrued yield, minus fees.

Example Strategies Powered by Makina

Makina’s execution engine is designed to support a wide range of institutional-grade investment strategies. Included are examples of strategies that could be deployed by Operators on Makina, unlocking new opportunities in DeFi:

• Large-Scale Yield Farming – Capture yield across multiple DeFi protocols, including decentralized exchanges (DEXes), lending platforms, and staking mechanisms, optimizing returns through strategic allocation and automated compounding.

• Delta-Neutral Yield Farming – Capture funding rate arbitrage across lending protocols and perpetual markets to generate returns.

• Liquidity Provisioning with Dynamic Hedging – Deploy capital into AMMs and lending markets while utilizing automated hedging mechanisms to minimize impermanent loss.

• Cross-Chain Leveraged Arbitrage – Efficiently allocate assets across multiple EVM-compatible chains to exploit discrepancies in lending rates, yield opportunities, or token prices.

• Systematic Long-Short Strategies – Utilize onchain derivatives and automated shorting mechanisms to generate risk-adjusted returns across market cycles.

• Volatility Harvesting & Options Selling – Implement volatility-selling strategies such as covered calls and cash-secured puts to generate yield from onchain options markets.

How Makina is Different

Makina pioneers a fundamentally new approach—a unified execution engine designed for institutional-grade strategies.

DeFi today is plagued by fragmentation, inefficiencies, and opaque risk management. Many protocols optimize yield but fail to provide secure, scalable, and composable execution. Makina is purpose-built to fill the need.

1. Makina’s execution model ensures infinite composability. Unlike siloed platforms, it integrates with any DeFi protocol across EVM chains, allowing seamless capital movement and strategy execution.

2. Risk management is a core feature of the protocol. At the smart contract level, Makina enforces pre-approved Instructions and dynamic exposure caps, preventing reckless allocation and providing a transparent, challengeable risk management system.

3. Makina’s execution model introduces a novel atomic execution mechanism that enables the instant unwind of positions in cases of emergency or increased risk, ensuring capital remains secure and responsive to market conditions.

4. Makina breaks down cross-chain barriers. Instead of being restricted to one ecosystem, users can maximize returns across Ethereum L1, L2s, and other EVM chains.

5. Makina allows for protocol Native Risk Underwriting, giving more risk-tolerant allocators an opportunity to earn higher yields by underwriting the exposure risks of the strategies. This adds another layer of risk mitigation, making Makina’s high-yielding assets prime collateral and pairing tokens.

6. Immediate protocol revenue from day one. Makina is built with a sustainable fee model from launch, ensuring ongoing value accrual to the ecosystem and its participants.

Makina is not just another DeFi strategy vault - it is the infrastructure that enables the next generation of onchain investment strategies.

What’s Next?

Makina is set to launch with flagship strategies that leverage its superior execution engine. As we continue developing, we’ll dive deeper into the protocol’s architecture, governance, $MAK tokenomics, and future roadmap in upcoming blog posts.

The future of onchain strategies is here—efficient, secure, and risk-optimized. Welcome to Makina.

Get Started & Follow Along

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