Gauntlet

Gauntlet earns fees by curating self-custodial on-chain vaults and by providing white-label yield integrations for fintechs and institutions. In both models, Gauntlet collects a share of the yield it generates or a platform fee — its October 2025 stress test, where USDT vaults absorbed a $775M supply spike and normalized APY within ten days, demonstrates the durability of that revenue engine under extreme conditions.

Gauntlet is both. It started as a quantitative advisory firm that helped protocols like Compound and Uniswap calibrate risk parameters. Today it also operates as a curator of yield-generating vaults, making allocation decisions across DeFi protocols while maintaining its research and monitoring infrastructure — a dual role that creates an unusual alignment and accountability structure.

KAST, a stablecoin neobank with 500,000 users, powers its Earn Program with Gauntlet's USD Alpha vault strategy. The integration lets KAST users earn DeFi yield without paying gas fees or managing protocol interactions — Gauntlet handles the routing, risk management, and auto-compounding behind the scenes.

Gauntlet's vaults are self-custodial — the firm never takes possession of client funds. The assets sit in on-chain smart contracts. Gauntlet's role is to curate the yield strategies, monitor the underlying protocols, and rebalance positions. Institutional clients often integrate through partners like Blockdaemon, whose regulatory-grade custody stack now embeds direct access to 50-plus Gauntlet vaults.

Gauntlet deploys vaults on Ethereum mainnet and L2 networks including Base, Optimism, and Arbitrum. In May 2026, the firm expanded to Tempo, a stablecoin-native L1, launching six new markets. Its monitoring infrastructure covers more than a dozen L1s and L2s, independent of where vaults are live.

No. Gauntlet has not publicly disclosed the backers of its corporate entity. The firm's website references investors only generically, listing no firm names, round sizes, or valuation figures.

Gauntlet describes its team as data scientists, Solidity engineers, economists, and veterans of high-frequency trading and traditional finance. The firm monitors markets 24/7 and emphasizes that it hires from top academic institutions, though it does not publicly list its founding principals or executive leadership on its site.