Summary
Ketju does not approve Benqi sAVAX: holders can sell only about $300k of sAVAX across every DEX, so a holder who needs AVAX must wait out a 15-day cooldown, and a 4-of-6 multisig with no timelock can upgrade the contract. Ketju reviewed sAVAX on the day it approved the Avalanche chain. sAVAX is Avalanche's largest liquid staking token, with $146M at the 2026-08-14 survey. It has run since February 2022, and no source reports an exploit. Avalanche has no slashing, so validator downtime costs rewards and not principal. 79% of all sAVAX sits as loop collateral: 43% in Benqi's own lending market and 36% in Aave v3 Avalanche, at LTVs up to 95%. A forced deleverage would sell into about $300k of depth. sAVAX traded at a discount of roughly 4% in Terra week and 3% in FTX week, and depth has since grown thinner. The only other Avalanche liquid staking provider, GoGoPool, shuts down on 2026-08-15, so Ketju has no alternative to choose. Ketju does not approve a category with one provider and these controls.
Review triggers
- Ketju will review sAVAX again only if every control, audit, delegation and withdrawal condition below passes together
- A reproducible current on-chain read identifies the proxy implementation, ProxyAdmin owner, Safe owners and threshold, timelock, pause roles, cooldown and claim-window values, and MPC custody arrangement
- An audit after 2022 maps to the exact live liquid-staking implementation and every privileged upgrade or oracle component
- A current validator-level report shows the realized delegation count and no validator above 5% of sAVAX stake
- A proposed-size sAVAX sale executes below 50 basis points and total on-chain depth stays above $10 million for 30 days, or the protocol ships an instant redemption facility with equal capacity
Facts
- Verdict
- Not approved
- Type
- Staking
- Chains examined
- Avalanche
- Instruments
- SAVAX
- Reviewed
- Last confirmed