RIADeFi
Refusal file · other

Why Ketju rejected Yield Basis

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 Superseded versions are recorded, never edited away.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 UNDISCLOSED CONTROL AND A DIRECTLY RELEVANT FOUNDER TRACK RECORD. Yield Basis, founded by Curve Finance founder Michael Egorov, auto-leverages Curve LP positions funded partly by borrowed crvUSD to give BTC liquidity providers impermanent-loss-free spot exposure — a real technical mechanism confirmed through the project's own GitHub repositories and DefiLlama's TVL methodology. But no legal entity name or jurisdiction was found anywhere, no admin key, multisig, or pause-authority structure was disclosed, no audit of Yield Basis's own contracts was located, and the exact leverage ratio and liquidation parameters governing the core mechanism could not be independently confirmed — the project's own site and docs were unreachable throughout this review. Separately, Egorov has a demonstrated, twice-realized pattern of running large personal leveraged CRV positions that created market stress: a near-liquidation in August 2023 that he unwound via OTC sales, and an actual liquidation in June 2024. A new protocol he founded that is itself explicitly leverage-based compounds rather than mitigates that founder-risk profile.

What would reopen the file

  • A named legal entity, incorporation jurisdiction, and control or admin-key structure are publicly disclosed
  • An independent, primary-source security audit of Yield Basis's own contracts is published
  • The exact leverage ratio, rebalancing trigger, and liquidation parameters are confirmed from primary documentation
  • Twelve consecutive months with no founder-level leveraged-position stress event that could plausibly affect Yield Basis's own Curve DAO dependency

Facts on file

Verdict
Rejected
Exposure
other
Chains examined
Ethereum
Instruments
YB
Memo version
v1
Reviewed
Next review

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