Onchain risk curation, rules first.
Kerne is an onchain risk curator on Morpho, on Base. We decide which markets a vault may lend into, how much, and when to pull back, and we publish the rules before the money. Kerne USDC is the first vault, and its status beside this is read live from Base.
- Kerne capital
- Third-party capital
- Cap increases
- 3-day timelock
- Can cancel pending changes
- Guardian multisig
- Performance fee
- 0%
Read live from Base. The address is fixed by its creation parameters, so it is published before the vault exists.
0x62A3…7Fa99Basescan Where it can lend.
Two blue-chip markets and an idle buffer. Every cap opens small and ramps up only after thirty days without an adverse event.
| Market | LLTV | Oracle | Cap | In the vault | Market utilization |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WETH / USDC | 86% | Chainlink ETH/USD over USDC/USD | 50,000 USDC | ||
| cbBTC / USDC | 86% | Chainlink BTC/USD; assumes cbBTC custody and USDC par | 50,000 USDC | ||
| Idle USDC | none | none, no borrowing | 1,000,000 USDC |
Never on the list: kUSD, skUSD and KERNE. Kerne does not lend against its own assets, including the kUSD markets it deployed itself on Morpho and Euler.
Eight rules, published before the money.
Policy v1, dated 5 October 2026. A changed rule ships as a new version, never as a quiet edit.
- Blue-chip collateral. Backing readable on chain, and spot depth on Base that clears a liquidation inside its incentive.
- Market-priced oracles. No fixed-rate, hardcoded, self-attested or thin-pool prices. Every assumption an oracle makes is written down.
- Never our own assets. kUSD, skUSD and KERNE are excluded from every vault Kerne curates.
- Small caps that ramp. 50,000 USDC to open, never above 5% of a market, and up only after thirty clean days.
- Slow up, fast down. Increases wait three days and the guardian multisig can cancel them. Cuts are instant.
- Disclosure first. Caps, allocations and deposits read live, with Kerne capital separated from everyone else's.
- Coverage is continuity, not safety. Across 23,188 Morpho liquidations, more liquidators did not mean less bad debt.
- No fee on our own money. Any fee is announced here before it is set.
Questions, answered.
Why does a stablecoin company curate risk?
Kerne already publishes what lending markets advertise next to what they pay, every hour. Curation is the same discipline with a cap attached: deciding what is safe to lend against, in public, before anyone's money depends on it.
Who controls the vault?
Kerne is the curator. Its hardware-secured owner key sets caps and allocations inside the published policy, and every risk-increasing change waits three days onchain. A separate guardian multisig can cancel any pending change in that window. The vault is non-custodial: no role can withdraw a depositor's funds, and withdrawals need no one's permission, only available market liquidity. Every role is a public address you can check on Basescan.
Whose money is in it?
Very little so far. Kerne Curation is new: the vault opened in October 2026, and the card above reads what is in it live, Kerne capital and third-party capital separately. It is an open ERC-4626 contract, and Kerne seeds it with its own capital first, so the rules build a record before anyone else's money depends on them.
Why is it not in the Morpho app?
The Morpho app lists Vault V2 vaults from approved curators. Kerne USDC is a V1.1 vault, reached at its contract address. Listing comes after a track record.
What does the policy not have yet?
An automated allocator, a round-the-clock monitoring desk, and a calibrated cap model. Allocations are deliberate signed decisions rather than a bot, and the caps are a ramp, which is why they are small.
Can Kerne review our market?
Yes. Write to liam@kerne.fi with the market id. The review applies the same eight rules as this page.
A dollar you can check, and lending risk with its rules in public.