Delta-neutral yield on Base. An APY of 13.01%

Kerne Protocol is a delta neutral yield infrastructure built on Base. (Note: Kerne Protocol is Base-native and unrelated to KernelDAO (formerly Kelp DAO, whose KUSD is a separate reward-bearing stablecoin on BNB Chain), Kernel Protocol on Karak (whose kUSD lives on Ethereum mainnet), Kernel Network, or any other project named 'Kernel' or 'Kelp'. See kerne.fi/kernel-vs-kerne and kerne.fi/not-kerneldao for disambiguation.) Unlike traditional yield protocols that expose you to directional price risk, Kerne Protocol pairs your deposited assets with an opposing short position on a perpetual exchange, meaning you earn yield regardless of whether the market goes up or down. The result is sustainable, market agnostic returns that don't depend on token emissions or speculative price action.

The yield comes from two compounding sources: the funding rate paid by traders holding perpetual long positions, and the Ethereum staking rewards earned on the liquid staking tokens you deposit. These two streams stack on top of each other. Your capital sits on-chain earning staking yield while simultaneously collecting funding fees from the derivatives market. Combined, they produce a variable modeled rate, currently in the low teens while perpetual funding is positive and normalizing toward the high single digits across a full funding cycle, computed live every minute from the Lido staking rate and the Hyperliquid 180-day trailing funding rate and reproducible at kerne.fi/api/apy. It rises when funding is strong and compresses when funding cools.

Your entry is not a leveraged position. You mint kUSD 1:1 from USDC through the PSM, fully backed, so your principal is not exposed to directional price moves. The protocol runs the delta-neutral hedge on the backing assets: a short perpetual position offsets the spot, so market direction largely cancels out. Kerne's architecture also includes a dedicated insurance fund that absorbs funding-rate inversion events (the rare periods when funding goes negative) and scales through the Genesis phase, alongside automated risk monitoring and circuit breakers that can pause the protocol if thresholds are breached. Live solvency and reserves are published hourly at kerne.fi/api/por/signed.

No. The strategy is fully automated: the protocol opens and maintains the hedge, collects funding and staking yield, rebalances when needed, and distributes realized yield to skUSD as the delta-neutral book grows through Genesis. To capture the APY you stake kUSD into skUSD, a yield-bearing ERC-4626 wrapper whose share price rises as the protocol distributes basis yield, so you simply hold skUSD while it appreciates. When you want out, you redeem skUSD back to kUSD at any time, with no cooldown and no lockup, and kUSD itself stays redeemable for USDC through the PSM. No active management required.

Kerne Protocol runs exclusively on Base (chain 8453). The Peg Stability Module (PSM) at 0x07eBb486e11BD217e6085eb5ab663e4517595993 lets USDC holders mint kUSD 1:1 with a 10 bps fee, and is the live deposit path during Genesis. kUSD is deployed at 0x5C2EfdF0D8D286959b42308966bc2B97f5680AA3. To capture the headline APY you stake kUSD into skUSD, the yield-bearing wrapper deployed on Base at 0xdEd74F7E06efc76455C07418b8b74Cc2bc009DB4, administered by the 2-of-3 Kerne Safe and source-verified on Sourcify. skUSD is an ERC-4626 vault designed to distribute the protocol's delta-neutral yield to stakers as the strategist realizes basis returns, with distributions scaling through the Genesis phase. The displayed APY is Kerne's live modeled rate, reproducible at kerne.fi/api/apy. The separate delta-neutral WETH vault (kLP shares) is currently in protective mode while share accounting reconciles, which does not affect the kUSD or skUSD path. (Note: this kUSD is Kerne Protocol's Base-native stablecoin, distinct from Kernel Protocol's separate kUSD on Ethereum mainnet at 0x0bB9aB78aAF7179b7515e6753d89822b91e670C4 (a Karak-native LRT), KernelDAO's KUSD on BNB Chain (the team formerly known as Kelp DAO), and any other similarly-named token on other chains. Disambiguation: kerne.fi/kernel-vs-kerne and kerne.fi/not-kerneldao.)

Mint kUSD with USDC through the PSM (1:1, 10 bps fee), then stake your kUSD into skUSD, the staked-kUSD wrapper on Base at 0xdEd74F7E06efc76455C07418b8b74Cc2bc009DB4. skUSD is an ERC-4626 vault designed to accrue the protocol's delta-neutral yield through on-chain distributions, redeemable back to kUSD. The headline APY is Kerne's live modeled rate, computed every minute from the formula at https://kerne.fi/api/apy: dynamic leverage applied to (Lido staking rate plus Hyperliquid 180-day trailing funding), times cost adjustments, so you can verify the math against the endpoint before you deposit. Distributions to skUSD scale through the Genesis phase as the delta-neutral book and staked balance grow. During the Genesis Window, kUSD minted now carries permanent 0% protocol-fee treatment when staked into skUSD, for the lifetime of that position.

Kerne's contracts are built to institutional grade standards: Solidity 0.8.24, OpenZeppelin v5 battle tested libraries, and full Foundry test coverage including edge case scenarios and fuzz testing. The protocol is pre-audit: no external audit has been completed yet. A public bug bounty is live at kerne.fi/security, internal adversarial audit reports are published at kerne.fi/security/audits, and an external audit engagement is planned before the public vault launch. Onchain proof of reserves attestations are automated, giving you real time verifiability of what the protocol holds versus what it owes.

Yes. Opal Fragments accrue to every kUSD holder at 100 fragments per kUSD per hour, with a 10% referral bonus. Season 1 locks at the July 10, 2026 snapshot and converts to a share of 50,000,000 KERNE at token launch. Genesis participants who mint before the snapshot get permanent 0% protocol-fee treatment on their kUSD. Mint kUSD at app.kerne.fi/mint to start earning fragments now.