Katharina

Product Builder in Crypto

[Katharina @kathar7na]

Huge.

[Superstate @SuperstateInc]

1/ Today we’re proud to introduce Direct Issuance Programs.

For the first time, public companies can raise capital directly from global investors by offering tokenized shares on Ethereum and Solana, with settlement handled in stablecoins.

[Katharina @kathar7na]

Innovation dies in darkness. Great questions to ask...

[Tarun Chitra @tarunchitra]

Did @HyperliquidX autodeleverage (ADL) $650m of PNL that it didn’t have to?

Was this 28x more than the minimal necessary?

Did almost every exchange (incl. @binance) copy-pasta a Huobi heuristic from 2015?

Can we do better in 2026?

𝐘𝐞𝐬 (+ a new paper)

[Katharina @kathar7na]

New business models emerging this cycle...

[Gauntlet @gauntlet_xyz]

1/ We are pleased to announce our partnership with @DeFiDevCorp (Nasdaq: DFDV), the first publicly traded Solana Digital Asset Treasury (DAT).

We will apply Gauntlet's quantitative approach to move their treasury and the dfdvSOL LST beyond traditional staking into advanced, risk-adjusted yield strategies on @DriftProtocol . 🧵

[Katharina @kathar7na]

"Markets are basically ways to move risk around... to allocate risk to a better state"

[jeff.hl @chameleon_jeff]

Thanks for having me on guys! Enjoyed the discussion

[Katharina @kathar7na]

@TheRealSynetos @hosseeb If you read their initial thread carefully, they included the word "official". Implying unofficial front ends, like something custom, might be compromised. Sneaky.

[Hasu⚡️🤖 @hasufl]

Looks like crypto transfers are becoming severely restricted in Europe.

1. @coinbase blocking transfers to recipients other than yourself, and if it is a self-custodial wallet, you have to sign a message to prove your ownership

[Katharina @kathar7na]

Diving deep into value creation from liquidity provisioning 🌊

[Tarun Chitra @tarunchitra]

⚠️ New week, New Paper

Q: What was the best way to profit market volatility in DeFi over the last year?

A: @JupiterExchange's JLP pool

How does this pool work? Is this yield real? Is it safe?

@theo_diamandis, @RiskRinger, @perpsjesus, @ns_gauntlet, and I explain!

[Katharina @kathar7na]

Congrats to the dYdX team! It's been such a pleasure partnering on MegaVault.

[Arcus @arcus_xyz]

The 2024 dYdX Ecosystem Report is here 🚀

Key highlights:
🔹 $DYDX holders grew 290% to 53,000
🔹 $270B in trading volume added, nearing $1.5T since 2021
🔹 150+ new markets launched permissionlessly

Full report here ➡️ https://t.co/eOWopaH97w

[Katharina @kathar7na]

Join us!

[Gauntlet @gauntlet_xyz]

Upcoming Space: Curated Risk, Curated Reward — a talk on Solana DeFi

Join us next Thursday, January 30, at 3pm ET for an alpha-heavy discussion covering @solana DeFi w/ @cindyleowtt, cofounder of @DriftProtocol and @tushar_jain, cofounder of @multicoin, hosted by our own @RiskRinger

https://t.co/INDXXd7rtG

[Katharina @kathar7na]

Collabs growing the space together 🙌🏻

[Gauntlet @gauntlet_xyz]

1/ Fantastic to see this @DeFiCarrot integration

We built on our 5+ years of managing risk for the largest DeFi protocols and our experience with vault curation to develop delta-hedged JLP vaults on @DriftProtocol.

Learn more about our hJLP vault strategies 👇

[Katharina @kathar7na]

Welcome to the Layercake

[Nicholas Cannon @inkymaze]

We're an optimization company. Layers of numerical optimization.

Strategies — Yield, Rewards, Vol. Target, hedged LP, ...
Vaults — Morpho, Aera, Drift, dYdX, ...
Protocols — Moonwell, Eigenlayer, Jupiter, Uniswap, ...
Chains — NEAR, Base, Arbitrum, Xai, ...

[Marius | Kamino @y2kappa]

Anyone using Kamino and signing through the wallet (Phantom, Solflare, Backpack) or ledger is not affected.

In general Solana apps should not be affected, this is mostly for backend bots, etc.

That's because the wallets do not leak the private keys to the application itself, the applications only get the signed transaction.

[Gauntlet @gauntlet_xyz]

Since our AMA yesterday, the hJLP cap has been hit twice.

Moving forward, we plan to raise the cap by $1-$2 million as necessary to ensure depositors can enter the strategy while retaining risk-adjusted returns.

[Katharina @kathar7na]

Join us on Monday to learn more!

[Gauntlet @gauntlet_xyz]

Join us this Monday at 2pm ET for an AMA on hJLP, a newly deployed delta-hedged JLP vault on @DriftProtocol.

Speakers:

• @cindyleowtt, Drift
• @riskringer, Gauntlet
• @perpsjesus, Gauntlet
• @kathar7na, Gauntlet — moderator

https://t.co/j25B63Vm3v

[Katharina @kathar7na]

Exciting milestone for the team!

[Velocity @VelocityDEX]

Fresh out of closed beta, @gauntlet_xyz's delta-neutral strategy for Hedged JLP is now OPEN to everyone!

Built on Drift, Gauntlet's vault taps into Solana's DeFi yield power, offering you JLP's impressive returns with reduced risk.

Act fast—capacity is already 50% full! 👀

[Katharina @kathar7na]

Great opportunity to work with someone really talented.

[Deepa Talwar @deepatalwar1]

Finally hiring for BD @heliuslabs!

You’ll be our second BD hire as we enter our next phase of growth after raising our Series B last month.

Great comp, remote, and work with a great team.

Link to apply in the next tweet

[mingxuanh.eth @MingXDynasty]

It was fun writing this piece! With more assets become restakeable, collateral health evaluation is increasingly more important to networks and stakers. Read the full blog post for a deep dive👇

[Gauntlet @gauntlet_xyz]

We are joining the @ethena Risk Committee.

Our top two focuses:

🔹 Shaping and supporting Ethena's risk management strategies in areas including LST exposure, exchange allocation, reserve fund sizing, and liquidity buffers.

🔹 Properly managing the protocol and USDe's subsequent risk profile to create sustainable future growth and organic stablecoin use cases.

[The Giver (Plumber) @lazyvillager1]

Funding rates and why they are not what they seem

Funding is often used as a heuristic to evaluate leverage that is being layered on. The punch-line being that when funding gets high, this is a symptom of an an over-heated market and possibly, the lack of stability & an increased threshold for downside reflexivity

Today, funding on an annualized basis appears to be 9-12% APR. Green and unlike the 60%+ APRs we saw exhibited back in March. Similarly, alts have very low leverage as well, seemingly providing confluence that across the spectrum of crypto assets, leverage is low & the potential for higher before lower is apt

I believe that real funding on BTC and ETH today are closer to being 60%-70%.

This funding discrepancy exists because of:
a) the natural inclination for positive yield / contango where levered longs pay levered shorts, and
b) the introduction of Ethana and presence of delta-neutral trades

According to Ethana, when they mint $1 of USDe, they take in your spot collateral and open up a commensurate 1x perp short for your asset of choice. As of June, they have roughly a ~$3-3.5B book. That book is roughly ~$1.4B in BTC and ~$1.1B in ETH.

Therefore, there is roughly that same quantum in 1x perp shorts that are open, and have been open, during the time that this collateral exists.

We can use rough algebra to derive what funding would be w/o the existence of Ethana:

Let L = notional longs and S = notional shorts

The first set of equations is L/S = 1.12
The second set of equations is that L+S=10 ($10bn notional OI as evidenced by Coinglass, et al)

Therefore L=1.12(10-L) and we arrive at L=5.3B and S=4.7B

If 1.3B of the 4.7B is Ethana perp shorts, then that is ~30% of the notional shorts outstanding in the pool. And without Ethana, the skew would resemble closer to being 5.3B/(4.7B-1.4B) = 1.59, or ~59% APR

Given that there is evidence of contango / positive yield for short perps over time (per Ethana white paper, historically 18% in 2021, (0.6%) in 2022, 7% in 2023 and 18% in 2024) this would make shorts the denominator, creating a multiplicative effect on what real APR is in the case of delta-neutral trades as well

When we replicate this math across for ETH, the math comes out to ~73% APR

I believe this creates a framework where funding is highly misrepresented (5-7x greater than what it acutally is), and explains the sudden downside relativity experienced in the German sell-of (alts & due to emissions have been down-only over time w/ low leverage expression and even net short in many cases, and commensurately did not fall much)

[Abril Zucchi @abrilzucchi]

yes, I’m from Argentina

I need to use stablecoins to have savings that aren’t losing value
p2p to my local currency or USD
send money to my family

I know first world countries sometimes don’t see the real value on this though