Firelight Integrates Onchain Protection into Kraken USDC Earn Vault

Firelight’s initial integration with a major exchange now delivers programmatic onchain cover to a Kraken USDC vault.

Firelight, an onchain cover-enablement protocol for DeFi, has announced its integration with Kraken Protected Strategies USDC on Kraken DeFi Earn. This brings built-in protection to one of the industry’s largest onchain earn programmes. The integration marks Firelight’s first with a major crypto platform, occurring as Kraken Earn surpasses $800 million in deposits. USDC accounts for nearly half of the capital in curated DeFi vaults across the market. The vault now includes cover against defined failures such as smart contract exploits, oracle failures and redemption failures, with terms registered onchain before the cover takes effect.

Onchain yield strategies often involve several interconnected protocols, creating risks that go beyond a single platform or vault. With increasing sophistication, additional safeguards become more crucial. Firelight aims to mitigate these risks by offering an extra layer of protection against specified failure events, featuring transparent coverage terms and independent validation.

Firelight cover is now active on Kraken Protected Strategies USDC (previously Boosted USDC) within Kraken DeFi Earn. This vault operates on Veda’s infrastructure and is curated by Sentora across established DeFi platforms like Tydro. Instead of exposing the vault to every protocol it interacts with, Firelight covers the vault directly, with validated payouts going straight to it. The coverage terms are recorded onchain for anyone to verify.

The vault cover is based on three core principles:

• Adaptive Terms: Coverage scope, capacity and risk pricing are recorded onchain and updated every 30-day epoch based on the vault’s current composition and risk profile.
• Defined Scope: Protection is limited to clearly defined technical and economic failure events that are published onchain transparently before coverage begins.
• Active Risk Management: Continuous surveillance via Hypernative and Sentora’s institutional risk infrastructure monitors risk exposure in real time.

“Every mature financial system has a way to absorb failure, and onchain yield has reached a point where protection needs to be built into the product, not treated as an afterthought. Audits reduce risk, but they don’t make users whole when something breaks. Since going live on October 6, Firelight has shown that cover with clear terms and independent review can sit underneath a product without changing how it operates. Bringing that to Kraken, one of the industry’s largest platforms, is the natural next step,” said Connor Sullivan, Chief Strategy Officer at Firelight.

“Since the launch of Kraken vaults in January, depositors have allocated more than $800 million. We appreciate Sentora’s continuing efforts to enhance the vaults they curate, including enrolling this USDC vault with Firelight. It’s a step toward giving DeFi users clearer options around onchain risk, an area that’s increasingly top of mind across the space,” said Marcel Ohngemach, Product Lead, DeFi at Kraken.

The capital backing Firelight’s cover is held outside the protected protocols, so a failure in one does not affect the payout funds. Firelight does not decide its own claims. When an exploit occurs, ZeroShadow, Firelight’s security partner, publishes a report detailing the incident. The Firelight Risk Consortium, consisting of five independent security and risk firms — GFX Labs, Hypernative, Credora, Native and Cyfrin — then evaluates the event against the published terms, confirms the loss and records the outcome onchain. This same process has been protecting Sentora’s USD Protected Vault and Protected RWA Vaults since October 6, and Kraken now extends it to one of the largest onchain earn programmes in the industry.

With the integration, the Kraken Protected Strategies USDC vault now has protection that is transparent, verifiable and independently assessed, establishing a model for how platforms can manage onchain risk. Since the cover enablement operates via Veda’s infrastructure, other exchanges, fintechs and vault operators using Veda can activate protection for their own products.

About Firelight

Firelight is an onchain cover protocol that creates a protection layer for the infrastructure supporting digital asset products. Platforms can enable cover on transparent, verifiable terms that are registered onchain. Stakers back that cover via non-custodial vaults using bonded XRP on the Flare Network, earning protocol emissions from the protocol’s operations and the coverage fees it collects.

Every cover event is validated by the Firelight Risk Consortium, an independent panel of security and risk firms. Firelight’s contracts have undergone audits by OpenZeppelin, Coinspect and 0xMacro, along with a competitive audit on Immunefi. Firelight was incubated by Sentora and receives technical support services from Sentinel Labs, which recently raised an $8 million seed round led by Gumi Cryptos Capital.

About Kraken

Kraken, founded in 2011, is one of the world’s longest-established and most secure crypto platforms. Its clients trade over 600 digital assets, traditional assets including U.S. futures and U.S.-listed stocks and ETFs, and six national currencies: GBP, EUR, USD, CAD, CHF and AUD. Trusted by millions of institutions, professional traders and consumers, Kraken is among the fastest, most liquid and performant trading platforms.

Kraken’s product suite includes the Kraken App, Kraken Pro, the Krak App, Kraken Institutional, Kraken’s onchain offerings and the Ninja Trader retail trading platform. Through these, clients can buy, sell, stake, earn rewards, send and receive assets, custody holdings, and use advanced trading, derivatives and portfolio management tools.

Kraken has established industry benchmarks for transparency and client trust, being the first crypto platform to perform Proof of Reserves. It adheres to applicable regulations and laws while safeguarding client privacy and upholding the highest security standards.

Additional information about Kraken can be found at www.kraken.com.

About Sentora

Sentora is the platform that fintechs, neobanks and exchanges use to build onchain products, providing the infrastructure that enables any app to earn. Its Earn OS integrates onchain yield strategies, risk management, protection and distribution into one platform, powering solutions from embedded earn features to stablecoin and tokenized asset growth programmes. Sentora’s solutions deploy billions in capital across leading onchain venues, supporting enterprise clients, asset managers and protocols with the infrastructure and expertise to manage at scale. It curates the vaults behind the Kraken Protected Strategies USDC programme, which surpassed $800 million in deposits within nine months, and its strategies support platforms including PayPal, EtherFi, Ripple and Aave.