Joined July 2011
- Tweets 7,386
- Following 942
- Followers 12,407
- Likes 19,237
531 Photos and videos
Jun 11
While Mythos is changing the security threat model in some ways, I am not particularly concerned about exploits being found in blue-chip smart contracts.
If the code base is small and important enough (most SC code is), then traditional methods are sufficient to achieve high confidence in security.
What's changing is the cost of searching for exploits in large codebases. These bugs were always there, but we are compressing the time to discover them.
This is largely what is driving the recent infrastructure compromises affecting everyone. With smart contracts, this can be protected against using rate limits and timelocks, limiting the damage that can be done if an off-chain system is hacked.
Overall, this is a period of understandable apprehension, but I'm confident that by following best practises we can make it to the other side stronger than before.
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Jun 9
Spark Savings now available to BitGo Custody users.
Earn on your USDT, USDC and USDS without having to leave custody!
Jun 9
Institutional capital held in custody can now now access on-chain credit markets through structured allocation via Spark.
Through BitGo, capital can be deployed into Spark Savings vaults, where it is allocated across multiple credit venues within a single, structured system.
Most on-chain lending requires selecting a single market or pool.
Spark takes a different approach:
Capital is deployed across venues based on predefined liquidity, exposure, and allocation parameters, rather than remaining fixed within one market.
Reducing exposure to high-utilisation conditions where liquidity becomes constrained.
This is a new path for institutional capital into on-chain credit markets.
Spark is now available via @BitGo institutional wallets.
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Jun 8
A lot of growth in Lido wstETH.
Jun 8
1M wstETH now backs SparkLend credit.
Over the past week, more than 228K wstETH was added to SparkLend.
The total supplied is now over 1M making Spark the largest wstETH collateral venue in DeFi.
Today, roughly 44% of all supplied collateral on SparkLend is wstETH.
Using staked ETH as collateral is common across DeFi lending.
SparkLend's distinction is scale.
The growth reflects a broader trend:
More ETH holders are seeking liquidity without giving up staking exposure, making staked ETH an increasingly important source of collateral across onchain credit markets.
Explore the market: app.spark.fi/markets
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Sam MacPherson retweeted
Jun 5
I spend a lot of time thinking about risk: how it is defined before capital moves, and how it is enforced once capital is already in the system.
My second post on Arkis’ risk framework covers what happens after capital is deployed
arkis.xyz/blog/how-arkis-enf…
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Jun 4
7 siblings keeping us afloat
Jun 4
7 Siblings, who loves buying the dip during market crashes, is back again!
He borrowed 10M $USDT from #Spark and bought 5,589 $ETH at $1,789 an hour ago.
arkm.com/explorer/address/0x…
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Jun 2
Great initiative!
DeFi's power comes from transparency, and it will be good to have open standards for how different teams assess risk.
Jun 2
1/ The EF App Relations team is putting out an open RFP for a neutral DeFi risk intelligence aggregator.
Public good, open source, no composite scoring. If you're the team to build this, applications close June 15.
Apply here: esp.ethereum.foundation/appl…
Here's how we got here 👇
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Jun 2
ETH deposits on SparkLend hit a new ATH of 552k.
Up 38% in the past month.
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Jun 2
📈
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Sam MacPherson retweeted
Jun 1
Spark is scaling exposure to funding rates through the integration with Arkis
Spark vaults can be allocated between: sparklend, institutional lending (via anchorage), stablecoin incentives (pyUSD), funding rates (via arkis), curation on morpho
Spark is updating the scope of the Arkis partnership with a recent proposal.
The goal is to capture funding rates yield when leverage will come back in the market.
Let's unpack its significance and risks management.
Arkis provides borrowers with a single margin account that can be used to interact with multiple venues in DeFi and Tradfi.
Via the Arkis integration, @sparkdotfi can lend liquidity to delta neutral borrowers and carry traders, therefore getting exposure to funding rates without needing active management and a trading team.
While the Arkis integration has launched in q1 2026, it is about to scale meaningfully in the next months. A recent proposal expands the asset universe, including commodities (oil) metals (gold, silvers) and venue like Aster and Lighter.
The risk parameters are still tight, with $0.5 of required risk capital for every dollar allocated into Arkis, with a $5m max daily inflow. As more track record is built, this constraint will be relaxed. Current exposure is around $17m.
Spark has already exposure to onchain lending (via Sparklend), stablecoin liquidity (via pyUSD), institutional lending (via Anchorage). The addition of Arkis makes it even more diversified, allowing the Spark Liquidity Layer (picture) to select a better risk return in different market environments.
read the full risk council assessment:
forum.skyeco.com/t/saep-15-u…
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May 27
DeFi has evolved a lot since 2019, so I would take what Manuel says with a grain of salt.
AI is certainly changing the threat model, but this applies to everything: DeFi, self-custody, qualified custodians, and exchanges.
Saying all DeFi is unsafe is unhelpful hyperbole.
May 27
Recent posts by Manuel Aráoz on AI and DeFi security have been widely circulated, and customers have asked whether they reflect OpenZeppelin's position. They do not.
Manuel co-founded OpenZeppelin and served as the company’s CTO until 2019 when he left the company.
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Sam MacPherson retweeted
May 27
Introducing the Transparency Alliance.
An industry-led alliance establishing the Token Transparency Framework as the standard for token market disclosures.
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May 27
Great article on the subDAO model!
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May 25
Sky revenue is close to top consumer apps like Polymarket and Pump.
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May 21
Morpho is to lending what Uniswap is to DEXs.
At Spark we were never interested in building lending market infrastructure - there are many good companies already doing this.
Having sovereignty over risk is what made Morpho stand out for us and is why we were an early adopter.
Morpho is built on Ethereum.
@Morpho enables users and applications to borrow, lend, and create custom credit markets through open, permissionless infrastructure.
Committed to FLOSS principles, Morpho advances more self-sovereign financial systems.
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May 21
Spark is the largest holder of Lido stETH.
Growing rapidly 📈
May 21
Nearly $2B of wstETH has been supplied into SparkLend.
Current positioning:
• ~$1.95B wstETH supplied
• $761M WETH borrowed
• WETH borrow rate: 1.85%
• 72.1% WETH utilization
Much of this activity follows a recursive ETH carry structure:
Deposit wstETH → borrow WETH → swap into wstETH → redeposit.
What stands out isn’t the existence of looping.
It’s the market structure supporting it:
• WETH borrow rates remain below broader market levels
• the market remains below the high-utilization rate escalation zone
• SparkLend’s ETH e-mode is designed around correlated ETH staking collateral
The result is a more efficient environment for scaled ETH-denominated credit positioning.
app.spark.fi/sparklend
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Sam MacPherson retweeted
May 20
By our calculations, $1.33B out of $4.4B of USDe's backing is lending against itself.
Here’s the rule we used:
Estimated self-lending = gross borrowing against USDe/sUSDe collateral × Ethena’s share of supplied liquidity in that market
So if a pool has $556M borrowed against USDe/sUSDe, but @ethena supplies 47.4% of the liquidity, we attribute ~$263M of that as Ethena-funded self-lending.
We’re not counting the full amount borrowed against USDe/sUSDe as “self-lending” where @ethena is not the only lender.
Using this pro-rata method, we get:
- Estimated Ethena self-lending: ~$1.33B
- Gross amount borrowed against Ethena assets: ~$1.67B
- Difference from pro-rata attribution: ~$336M
Sources of data:
AAVE: research.yuzu.money/aave-exp…
Steakhouse USDtb: app.morpho.org/ethereum/vaul…
Steakhouse Prime: app.morpho.org/base/vault/0x…
Kamino: kamino.com/earn/lend/ethena-…
Juplend: jup.ag/lend/ethena/market
Backing: app.ethena.fi/dashboards/bac…
May 20
Ethena (@ethena) has updated its transparency page, providing exact visibility into where assets are deployed and making all onchain wallets public.
As of now, $2.8B of $4.4B, around 64%, is visible onchain. The remainder sits in custodial solutions where user assets are commingled and cannot be easily identified.
Transparency page:
app.ethena.fi/dashboards/bac…
EVM cluster:
debank.com/bundles/222638/po…
Solana:
jup.ag/portfolio/C23FGxQB2Ls…
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May 19
Great discussion on Sky at 45:52.
I agree with the comment that it has been hard to underwrite Sky as an investor due to the complexity/pivots, but things are stabilizing.
The subDAO model is now fully operational, and Primes are deploying billions in capital. Accounting methods and dashboards are being consolidated.
Lending markets are easy to understand, and so I think there has been an over-focusing on the concept of "lending" as this narrow thing.
Lending as a whole is quite complex. Pooled, isolated, vaults, but these are all infrastructure details. Sky (via subdaos) will use all of these methods in combination to achieve the best possible capital efficiency.
I really think there is a lot of opportunity here for those who are still paying attention.
May 18
New episode with @salveboccaccio @defi_kay_ @shaundadevens & @0xcarlosg
We Discuss:
- Coinbase and Hyperliquid Partnership Dynamics
- Prediction Markets and Market Structure
- Stablecoins, Sky, and Crypto Revenue Models
- And more!
Timestamps 👇
(0:00) Introduction
(2:13) Hyperliquid And Coinbase Shakeup
(10:21) Native Markets Transition
(16:29) Stablecoin Deals Beyond Hyperliquid
(24:26) Cerebras Pre-IPO Frenzy
(32:05) HIP-4 Outcome Markets
(38:55) Spinning Up Prediction Markets
(45:52) Sky, USDS, And Spark
(56:03) Sky Revenue Distribution
(1:03:48) Closing Comments
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