RIADeFiPublished by Ketju Research
Refusal file · other

Why Ketju rejected Clearstar

Memo v1Published by Ketju Research

A registry memo, published verbatim and versioned. Superseded versions are recorded, never edited away. A rejection is a judgment for Ketju's client base and thesis, not a universal safety claim. Not investment, legal, tax, or compliance advice.

The memo

REJECTED — CLEARSTAR'S OWN PUBLISHED DUE-DILIGENCE STANDARD DESCRIBES ITS OWN VAULT STRUCTURE AS A DISQUALIFIER. Clearstar runs curated Morpho vaults, plus positions on Euler, Flare, Upshift, IPOR, OpenEden, and Spectra, across eleven chains, holding roughly $183M. Every Clearstar Morpho vault checked in this review shares one owner address and one curator address, and a direct on-chain code check on Base confirms both are plain externally-owned accounts, not multisigs — single-key control over risk parameters and admin functions across an eleven-chain, $183M curator. Clearstar's own published due-diligence framework, used to score third-party protocols it reviews, explicitly lists "unclear admin rights — unverified multisigs, unknown signers, EOA admin keys" as a red flag; that description matches its own vaults' control structure, which is not among the protocols it has published a report on. Separately, its own legal disclosures are internally inconsistent: marketing describes Clearstar as "a Swiss risk curation firm" founded in 2022, but its Terms of Service name the actual website operator as NovaFusion S.A., a Panamanian company, licensing IP from a separately referenced "Clearstar Labs AG" this review could not independently verify as a registered Swiss entity, and its Legal Notice page states plainly it "will be refined... as the company legal framework evolves."

What would reopen the file

  • Vault admin authority moves to a disclosed multisig with named signers and a threshold, replacing the single EOA control confirmed in this review
  • A consistent, complete legal-entity disclosure is published, resolving the Swiss-branding-versus-Panama-operator inconsistency
  • The cause of the October 2025 to February 2026 TVL swings is identified and confirmed
  • Clearstar publishes a due-diligence report on its own curated vaults using its own stated methodology

Facts on file

Verdict
Rejected
Exposure
other
Chains examined
Base, Flare, Ethereum, Monad, Hyperliquid L1, Starknet, Arbitrum, Hemi, Katana, Unichain, Polygon
Memo version
v1
Reviewed
Next review

← All published refusals