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Tear Sheet
Kerne Protocol
A delta-neutral basis strategy on Base. WETH and liquid-staking collateral held on-chain, hedged with a short perpetual on Hyperliquid, capturing funding-rate carry. Every figure below is read live from public endpoints, not hand-entered.
Live metrics
Updated on load and every 60 seconds from the same JSON any visitor can pull. The PSM backing ratio renders only when the hourly signed Proof-of-Reserve cryptographically verifies; otherwise it shows as unverified rather than a number you must trust.
Strategy
- Type: delta-neutral basis (funding-rate carry).
- Collateral: WETH and liquid-staking tokens, held on-chain in an ERC-4626 vault.
- Hedge: short perpetual on Hyperliquid, sized to keep net delta near zero.
- Yield source: perp funding plus staking yield, net of hedging and insurance costs.
- kUSD: a 1:1 USDC-backed unit minted through the PSM. skUSD: the yield-bearing stake.
Key facts
- Chain: Base (chainId 8453).
- Admin: 2-of-3 Gnosis Safe; deployer keys renounced.
- Proof-of-Reserve: hourly, EOA-signed, third-party-reproducible, at /api/por/signed.
- Source: live mint-path contracts verified on BaseScan and Sourcify.
- Audit: pre-audit; independent engagement being finalized (see below).
Verified contracts
The live money-path contracts are source-verified, so anyone can read the exact deployed code. Full registry and the bytecode-reconstruction evidence for older contracts is at /transparency/source-audit.
| Contract | Address | Role |
|---|---|---|
| KerneVault v2 (live) | 0x8ccc…292B | Deposit / mint vault |
| KUSDPSM v3 (live) | 0x07eB…5993 | USDC to kUSD peg module |
| kUSD | 0x5C2E…0AA3 | USDC-backed stable unit |
| skUSD | 0xdEd7…9DB4 | Yield-bearing staked kUSD |
| Governance Safe | 0x52d3…4877 | 2-of-3 multisig, admin |
Disclosures
- Pre-audit. Kerne has not yet completed an external audit. An internal adversarial security review and its findings are published at /security/findings-tracker; an independent audit engagement is being finalized.
- Off-chain leg. The Hyperliquid hedge equity in the Proof-of-Reserve is reported by Kerne and bound to a signature; on-chain balances are independently readable by anyone. An independent third-party attestation of the off-chain leg is being scoped.
- Not advice. This factsheet is informational. It is not an offer, solicitation, audit, solvency guarantee, or financial, legal, or tax advice. Yields are variable and not guaranteed.