Mint kUSD now. The Genesis Vault comes later.
The live way into Genesis is minting kUSD on Base at a 1:1 rate with USDC, less the published swap fee, through the deployed Peg Stability Module. It accrues Opal Fragments at whatever cohort multiplier the published ladder is on when you mint, and kUSD redeems through the same module with a signed proof of reserves published every hour. Exit is not at par: the same tiered fee applies on the way out, and how much can leave in a single transaction is published live on the reachable exit depth panel. That is a deployed contract you can read today. Whether the Genesis Extended window is still open, and at what multiplier, is on the live counter below rather than in this sentence. The Genesis Vault, the dedicated escrow this page is named for, is a separate future contract and is not deployed.
Mint kUSD on Base and earn Opal fragments toward the 5,000,000 KERNE community tranche of the fixed 50,000,000 KERNE Genesis pool (5% of supply). Mint now to lock the 1.0x Final stretch multiplier, fixed for your wallet and applied to every fragment you accrue through the August 19, 2026 snapshot. kUSD redeems through the same module with a signed proof of reserves published every hour. Exit is not at par: the same tiered swap fee applies on the way out as on the way in, and how much can leave in a single transaction is on the reachable exit depth panel.
Fragments accrue every hour you hold kUSD, and your multiplier is fixed by how early you first deposit. Mint now to lock the 1.0x Final stretch multiplier. This is the final window before the snapshot.
Sizing above the public cohort? The founding anchor tier is a separate, higher points floor granted by an executed anchor deposit letter, not a cohort a public mint can select. The rules are published at the Opal anchor tier and the deposit terms at the anchor terms.
Audit status. Kerne has completed its first external audit. The Hexens final report published on July 31, 2026 and you can read it in full, with our response to every finding here. That is a review of five contracts at one commit, not a guarantee of safety. Minting is open: the patched Peg Stability Module completed its cutover on July 10 and is live. The separate WETH vault runs earlier bytecode than the reviewed commit, which is why deposits into that WETH vault are closed. If you would rather lock the current Opal multiplier now, without moving any funds, register your intended mint in the commit queue.
The Genesis Vault is not built yet. Here is what it will be.
The Genesis Vault will be a 1:1 USDC escrow that locks whatever cohort multiplier the published ladder is on when you deposit, applied to every Opal Fragment you go on to earn, with your USDC redeemable 1:1 at any time. It is not deployed. There is no contract, no address and nothing to deposit into, and this page is not an offer. Everything below describes how it is designed to work and what it will have to satisfy before it opens. If you want a live position today, kUSD minting and skUSD staking are already running.
The Genesis Vault opens once the escrow contract is deployed and has had its own third-party review, which the Hexens audit published on July 31, 2026 did not cover. Until then, you can already earn Opal Fragments today by minting kUSD at a 1:1 rate with USDC less the published swap fee, at whatever cohort multiplier the published ladder is on when you mint. The same Opal Fragments, the same snapshot.
Designed so a deposit could never be at the team's mercy
Every USDC you deposit mints one kGEN receipt. Burn it to get your USDC back at any time. Withdrawals have no cap, no cooldown, and can never be paused.
There is no admin path that can move your deposited USDC. The contract only custodies. A rescue function can recover stray tokens but is mathematically bounded so it can never dip into depositor principal.
A hard cap bounds how much the vault will ever hold, set by the 2-of-3 Safe. Deposits start closed and only open after this contract has had its own third-party review, so the vault never holds more than the team is comfortable backing.
KerneGenesisVault is a single, minimal contract built only from audited OpenZeppelin primitives, but it is not deployed and holds nothing. It was not in the scope of the Hexens audit published on July 31, 2026, which covered kUSD, skUSD, KUSDPSM, KerneVault and esKERNE. It gets its own third-party review before any deposit opens.
How it will work, once it exists
Send USDC to the Genesis Vault and receive an equal amount of kGEN, a transferable receipt token that shows up in your wallet.
Your kGEN accrues Opal Fragments at whatever the published cohort rate is when you deposit, held for your wallet even after the public window steps down toward the snapshot. The specific rate is not set today, because the vault is not deployed and the ladder steps on a published schedule.
Burn your kGEN to withdraw the exact USDC you put in. No lockup. Your funds are yours the entire time.
When kUSD minting and skUSD staking are fully live, convert your USDC into a kUSD or skUSD position to keep earning the live delta-neutral yield.
How this window is built to be different
The pre-deposit vault is how most new dollars and chains launch now, and its most-copied version has a documented failure. One $825M vault in October 2025 filled its cap in about 22 minutes, and on-chain timestamps showed most of it had been deposited before the public was even told the window was open, with no reserves anyone could read while it filled. We are opening a capped founding window too, so we would rather you check ours against the chain than take our description of it. The full teardown, with sources.
The protocol's entire reserve is a small, public figure, enumerated holder by holder in an hourly signed proof of reserves you can read straight from Base. A hidden pre-fill is not possible against a book that is fully on-chain and this small. You see exactly what exists, including how little there is, before you commit anything.
A proof of reserves published during a pre-deposit window is rare. In the launches that drew front-running complaints, the only verifiability came from outsiders reading a block explorer after the fact. Here the signed attestation is live before you deposit and after, not a post-mortem.
The founding multiplier steps down on a weekly schedule anyone can read on the Opal ladder, and the points rule it settles into is published in advance, with a version number and an effective date, before the first snapshot it affects. Entry is not a latency auction won by whoever lands the first transaction. The allocation is fixed, so a higher multiplier moves shares between holders rather than enlarging the allocation: it is zero-sum, and other holders are who it comes from.
kUSD redeems through the live PSM with no lockup and no fixed exit window, so the position is never trapped or unpriced. Exit is not at par: the same tiered swap fee that applies on the way in applies on the way out, 10 bps at base size stepping down to 8 from $50,000, 7 from $250,000 and 5 from $1,000,000 per swap, and getFee on the module returns the exact figure at your size. One further caveat, stated plainly: the PSM keeps an emergency multisig pause, like any responsible peg module, so this is redemption with no lockup, not a claim that a pause can never exist. The dedicated non-pausable Genesis escrow is a future contract, not yet deployed.
These are properties you can verify yourself, not a recommendation. Nothing here is an offer of any token or a solicitation to buy or sell any security, and it is not investment advice.
kGEN is a receipt, not a yield token: it earns no interest by itself, and its only job is to let you redeem your USDC 1:1. Your deposited USDC sits in the escrow and is published in the proof-of-reserves. Genesis Extended fragments lock at the August 19, 2026 snapshot as a share of the community tranche of the fixed 50,000,000 KERNE allocation (5% of supply), which since August 6, 2026 is 5,000,000 KERNE of it. That share becomes $KERNE only at a token generation event, and no token generation event is scheduled or guaranteed. The redeemability of your USDC does not depend on it; the fragment does. How KERNE is backed.