RIADeFi
Refusal file · stable lending

Why Ketju rejected SparkLend

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 Superseded versions are recorded, never edited away.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 FOR UNVERIFIED RESERVE-LEVEL FACTS, not a design flaw. SparkLend is an Ethereum Aave v3 fork with Sky-governed parameters and unusually deep stablecoin liquidity supplied through Sky. This review corrects the previous memo: a SparkLend supplier is not a pro-rata investor in the Spark Liquidity Layer's CeFi or RWA book. Spark says assets supplied to a SparkLend reserve stay there; the SLL can add or remove its own liquidity but does not redeploy the client's aToken claim. The relevant risks are therefore Aave-style borrower bad debt, collateral and oracle failure, governance or upgrade action, available cash at exit, and — for DAI or USDS exposure — the Sky balance sheet and peg. The architecture is credible, but a recommendation still needs a position-specific asset choice and live liquidity test rather than a protocol-wide approval.

What would reopen the file

  • Any selected reserve with unresolved bad debt, an unbacked aToken balance, or a failed proposed-size withdrawal
  • USDS depeg beyond 1% for more than 24h
  • Utilization above 90% for 30 days in the selected reserve, or an emergency freeze lasting more than 24 hours
  • A selected collateral oracle running without the documented multi-feed or ratio-killswitch protections
  • Any unaudited upgrade to a custom oracle, rate strategy, cap automator, or pool implementation used by the selected reserve

Facts on file

Verdict
Rejected
Exposure
stable lending
Chains examined
Ethereum
Instruments
USDC, USDS, DAI, WETH
Memo version
v1
Reviewed
Next review

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