RIADeFi
Refusal file · other

Why Ketju rejected EtherFi Borrowing Market

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 Superseded versions are recorded, never edited away.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 ON A LIVE DOCUMENTATION-STATUS INCONSISTENCY AND A PERMISSIONED BORROW SIDE. EtherFi's Borrowing Market is an ether.fi-operated Aave v4 instance backing ether.fi Cash, the company's crypto-collateralized Visa card — genuinely well-controlled in several respects, including a price-cap adapter whose owner-reset function is wired so it can never be called by anyone, "for us, for our multisig, for anyone," per ether.fi's own documentation. But every public page describing this product carries a "coming soon" banner despite roughly $190M already supplied and roughly $25M already borrowed on Optimism at the time of this review — a live inconsistency between disclosed product status and actual on-chain activity this registry treats as disqualifying on its own. Borrowing itself is restricted to ether.fi Cash account holders, not open to third-party lenders the way the supply side is, and no separate legal entity name for this specific product was confirmed.

What would reopen the file

  • ether.fi's own documentation pages are updated to reflect the product's actual live status, resolving the "coming soon" inconsistency
  • A named legal entity specific to the Borrowing Market is disclosed
  • The borrow side opens beyond ether.fi Cash account holders, or the permissioned-borrow design is otherwise justified and disclosed as intentional and permanent
  • A primary Certora or Paladin audit report is published and linked, resolving the discrepancy with DefiLlama's zero-audit field

Facts on file

Verdict
Rejected
Exposure
other
Chains examined
OP Mainnet, Scroll
Memo version
v1
Reviewed
Next review

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