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Howdy!

It’s the first day of Permissionless IV, where the vibes seem optimistic and attendees are running for the shade.

Today, we’ve got an exclusive on Multicoin’s latest investment, a Solana treasury stock down 60%, and Gemini’s foray into Solana staking:

Yield.xyz nets $5M Multicoin bet to eliminate ‘backend Frankensteins’

DeFi infrastructure firm Yield.xyz has exited stealth with a $5 million strategic round from Multicoin Capital, Lightspeed has learned exclusively. 

Yield.xyz aggregates staking and DeFi yields into one set of APIs. This lets wallets, crypto apps and neobanks offer DeFi functionality without having to manually integrate a laundry list of yield venues. Down the line, the platform aims to offer a more automated yield strategy, where the DeFi yield rate can be abstracted away and built around users’ risk appetites. 

Yield.xyz, which was formerly known as Omni, got its start in the 2021 crypto cycle as a multichain wallet app. Earlier this year, the company was acquired by Echo Base, the company behind the peer-to-peer crypto marketplace Paxful.

With the rebrand and fresh funding from Multicoin, Yield is now honing in on general yield integrations. 

Crypto allows developers to spin up new pools of capital basically instantly. This can be dopamine-inducing for users but a pain point for user-facing apps. Yield noticed that some of its clients would have 20 or more employees cobbling together DeFi APIs and creating “backend Frankensteins,” co-founder Serafin Lion Engel told me. When employees would leave the wallet or app companies, it would be costly to figure out how to maintain the codebases, he added. 

With Yield.xyz, apps can just integrate one API and get access to hundreds of staking and DeFi integrations, Lion Engel said. It’s the largest yield supplier by number of integrations for the crypto wallet Ledger. 

Yield.xyz’s infrastructure offers access to over 200 yield sources on Solana, according to a tracking sheet viewed by Blockworks. This number will likely grow further with the firm’s support from Solana-aligned Multicoin, which gives Yield a “front row seat to everything that’s going on in Solana,” Lion Engel said.

Down the line, Yield wants to onboard more traditional fintech-y firms like neobanks. It also wants to create an automated yield strategy where deposits can automatically rebalance and possibly create something like a unified DeFi yield rate. The demand for these developments could be driven by the explosive growth in demand for stablecoins. 

“Now it's very easy for you to onramp and get access to stablecoins. The next thing is really going to be being able to get yield on them,” Lion Engel said.

— Jack Kubinec

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Katana is a DeFi chain built for higher sustainable yield and deep liquidity.

It concentrates liquidity into core applications and channels the chain’s revenue back to the users. Creating a better DeFi experience that benefits the active users on the chain.

Earn KAT tokens: Pre-deposit with turtle club 

Upexi is Downpexi today:

The Solana treasury company’s shares fell suddenly after a filing went live that would allow investors to sell common shares of the stock, Bloomberg reported.

Yes, you heard that right: UPXI nuked 60% because investors are now theoretically able to sell it. Never change, crypto.

— Jack Kubinec

Gemini has rolled out Solana staking for its custody clients, allowing ETFs, corporations and high-net-worth individuals to delegate SOL while keeping their assets in cold storage. 

Staking is core to how Solana runs. You lock up tokens, support network consensus and earn rewards in return. However, for large institutions, capital comes with compliance and custodial constraints that historically have made staking tricky.

Most options require relinquishing custody, relying on pooled validators, or building in-house infrastructure. That is not ideal for ETF issuers, corporate treasuries or anyone with a fiduciary duty.

Gemini's solution is to let clients stake directly from custody, retain complete control over validator selection, and do it all under the umbrella of a qualified custodian. 

The regulatory-grade infrastructure Gemini offers might not be all that exciting to retail users, but it’s exactly what big capital needs to move.

— Jeffrey Albus

Crypto’s execution layer is meeting in Brooklyn.

From programmable identity to parallel infra to onchain governance that works — this is where real builders compare notes.

Joseph Lubin. Goutham Buchi. Illia Polosukhin. Alex Blania.
 
June 24-26 | Brooklyn, NY

A message from Brian Rudick, chief strategy officer at Upexi: