Idle USDC, operated like a treasury desk.
Kerne configures and operates your stablecoin treasury on Base. Capital stays in your own Safe, sits in a fully reserved position that redeems 1:1 for USDC, and is backed by an hourly signed proof of reserves you can verify yourself. One fixed setup fee. No custody handoff, no lockup, no token speculation.
Prefer to read first? Download the one-pager (PDF).
Read live from the same public endpoints anyone can call. Nothing below is hand-entered, so it cannot quietly drift from reality.
Run a protocol of your own? The same signed proof-of-reserves stack is a standalone product: a one-time signed statement of your reserves a counterparty can verify themselves, one flat fee, delivered in days. See the Proof-of-Reserves snapshot.
A fixed-fee engagement, not a sales cycle
We do the operational work a corporate treasury would otherwise have to learn from scratch: the risk review, the policy, the Safe configuration, the deployment, and the ongoing reporting. The first deliverable is a paid health check that is useful on its own.
We map your stablecoin balances, your venue, custody, bridge and concentration risk, your same-day liquidity ladder, and your idle-cash leakage. You receive a one-page treasury memo and a recommended allocation. This stands alone: you are under no obligation to deploy a dollar afterward.
We write your treasury rules in plain language (concentration caps, a minimum same-day liquidity floor, approved venues, and a pre-defined unwind path), then configure your own multisig Safe and the operational rails around it before any capital moves.
Approved USDC is moved into kUSD at 1:1 through the on-chain Peg Stability Module: fully reserved, and redeemable for USDC at any time through the same module. The capital never leaves your control. Your keys, your Safe.
A daily exposure view, the signed proof-of-reserves trail covering your position, and a board-ready monthly export for your accountants. Retainer-based oversight, not a black box.
Why a treasurer can operate this
Every assurance below is something you can check yourself, today, without taking our word for it. That is the entire point.
Capital stays in your own client-controlled Safe or an explicitly approved deployment path. Kerne is infrastructure, not a custodian. We never take possession of your funds and there is no path by which we could.
Protocol administration sits with a 2-of-3 Gnosis Safe on Base, with the first signer hardware-backed. On the money-path contracts no single key can move protocol funds or grant roles. The one current exception is the skUSD staking vault, redeployed 2026-07-03: the Safe was granted DEFAULT_ADMIN and the bot strategist was granted STRATEGIST on 2026-07-08, and the deployer Trezor retains both roles until a planned renounce after the July 2026 external audit, documented at /security/skusd-admin-status. Verify it: 0x52d3E450bA6c299B1B07298F1E87DD74732D4877.
Every hour the protocol publishes a signed attestation of reserves at /api/por/signed. The signature is EIP-191 over the attestation hash; recovering the signer takes three lines of code. Backing is not asserted, it is attested and checkable.
When the delta-neutral hedge is open it runs on a single venue, Hyperliquid, and we say so plainly rather than imply a diversified book. The hedge engine is live and runs a pilot-scale short, sized against a small disclosed founder-custodied float (see kerne.fi/api/por); multi-venue routing exists in the engine and arms as venues are added.
Outstanding kUSD is backed 1:1 by USDC held in the Peg Stability Module. You redeem through the same module at the published fee, with no lockup and no cooldown. Exit is symmetric with entry.
14 of 18 deployed contracts are source-verified on both BaseScan and Sourcify; the 4 pending rows are disclosed with reasons. The full registry and an independent verification guide live in the data room.
How capital is sequenced
We are deliberate about the order, and we sequence it the way an institutional desk would require rather than the way that markets best.
Approved USDC becomes kUSD at par, fully reserved, and redeemable 1:1 through the Peg Stability Module whenever you want. This is a transparent, liquid, cash-equivalent position with a verifiable backing trail. It is not a yield product, and we do not present it as one.
Kerne's yield engine (Ethereum staking rewards plus Hyperliquid perpetual funding, designed for net-zero directional exposure at scale) is live and runs a pilot-scale short against a small disclosed founder-custodied float while the book is seeded through Genesis. The staked, yield-bearing path (skUSD) is live and open to treasury capital once the external audit is published. We gate the yield-bearing path on the audit on purpose, and we never promise yield on held kUSD.
The published skUSD APY is a live formula output, variable, computed from public Lido and Hyperliquid data. The current reading reflects a positive-funding regime; across a full funding cycle the normalized rate is lower, in the high single digits. It is a modeled rate, not a fixed promise. Methodology is open at /api/apy and /docs/yield-methodology.
Where Kerne is today, stated plainly
- Early. Kerne has been live since 2026-05-14. TVL and holder count are small. The live numbers above are real, and we lead with them rather than hide them.
- One external audit, and the deployed vault is not the audited build. Hexens fieldwork ran from July 13, 2026 and the final report published on July 31, 2026, in full, with two of its ten findings acknowledged rather than fixed and the live vault running earlier bytecode than the reviewed commit. Alongside it the verification story rests on the signed proof of reserves, the verified source, and a corpus of over two hundred self-found findings, of which the named findings and their live statuses, open ones included, are published at /security/findings-tracker. The full internal reports go to counterparties on request under NDA rather than to the open web, because they carry exploitation detail against contracts that are not yet remediated.
- Single venue. The funding leg runs on Hyperliquid alone today. Multi-venue routing exists in the engine and arms as venues are added.
We put the unfiltered version in one place so you can diligence it quickly: the data room and the security pages state every known weakness before you ask. Judge the machinery, not the odometer.
Fees, in full
We lead with the setup fee and the recurring oversight, not with incentive fees. Everything is quoted up front and agreed in writing before any work begins.
| Service layer | Commercial structure |
|---|---|
| Treasury health check | $5,000 to $15,000 one time |
| Onboarding and policy design | $10,000 to $30,000 one time |
| Monitoring and reporting retainer | $3,000 to $10,000 per month |
| Assets under management fee | 0.50% to 1.25% annualized |
| Performance fee (only where authorized) | 10% to 20% of yield above an agreed benchmark |
On-chain, kUSD mints and redeems through the Peg Stability Module at a published, tiered swap fee (0.10% base, stepping down to 0.05% at $1M or more per swap) that is set in the contract where anyone can read it. There are no private exemptions.
Who this is for
Operating cash held in USDC, USDT, or DAI that is sitting idle in a Safe earning nothing.
Teams managing runway on-chain that want the idle portion working without taking on custody or smart-contract risk they cannot see.
Desks parking stable balances between deployments that value transparent, liquid, redeemable positions over locked yield.
Smaller DAOs and token treasuries that hold significant stablecoins but lack a dedicated internal treasury desk.
Initial focus band: $500k to $20M in stablecoins. Teams already comfortable operating a Safe and reading on-chain reporting convert the fastest.
Start with a treasury health check
Tell us what you are holding and where. We will scope your idle stablecoin balances, the risk you are carrying, and what a conservative allocation looks like, and send you a one-page memo. No commitment to deploy.
Would rather diligence us first? Read the data room.
Planning an allocation but waiting on the audit window? You can register a soft, non-binding indication of intended size in the commit queue before you deploy.
Kerne is infrastructure, not a custodian or an investment adviser. Nothing on this page is investment, legal, tax, or accounting advice. kUSD is a protocol-issued synthetic dollar, not a fiat-backed payment stablecoin; kUSD itself pays no yield for holding it, and yield exists only through the separate skUSD staking receipt. Figures shown live are read from public endpoints and are variable. Service fees are indicative ranges and are confirmed per engagement.