British Virgin Islands, BVI, Oct. 15, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Firelight, an onchain cover-enablement protocol for DeFi, today announced its integration with Kraken Protected Strategies USDC on Kraken DeFi Earn, bringing built-in protection to one of the largest onchain earn programmes in the industry. The integration is Firelight’s first with a major crypto platform and comes as Kraken Earn passes $800 million in deposits, with USDC accounting for close to half of the capital in curated DeFi vaults across the market. The vault is enabled with cover against defined failures, including smart contract exploits, oracle failures and redemption failures, under terms registered onchain before cover is effectuated.
Onchain yield strategies can involve multiple interconnected protocols, introducing risks that extend beyond any individual platform or vault. As these strategies become more sophisticated, additional safeguards are increasingly important. Firelight is designed to address these risks by providing an added layer of protection against defined failure events, with transparent coverage terms and independent validation.
Firelight cover enablement is now live on Kraken Protected Strategies USDC (formerly Boosted USDC) on Kraken DeFi Earn, which runs on Veda‘s infrastructure and is curated by Sentora across established DeFi venues such as Tydro. Rather than leaving the vault exposed to every protocol it touches, Firelight enables cover of the vault itself, with validated payouts released directly to it. The terms of that cover are registered onchain, where anyone can verify them.
The fundamentals of the vault cover rest on three core principles:
- Adaptive Terms: Coverage scope, capacity, and risk pricing are registered onchain and reset with each 30-day epoch (i.e., coverage period) against the vault’s live composition and risk profile.
- Defined Scope: Protection applies strictly to pre-defined technical and economic failure events published transparently onchain prior to coverage activation.
- Active Risk Management: Continuous monitoring through Hypernative and Sentora’s institutional risk infrastructure tracks 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 supporting Firelight’s cover sits outside the protocols it protects, so a failure in one of them doesn’t hit the money meant to pay out. Firelight also doesn’t decide its own claims. When an exploit happens, ZeroShadow, Firelight’s security partner, publishes a report on what went wrong. The Firelight Risk Consortium, five independent security and risk firms made up of GFX Labs, Hypernative, Credora, Native and Cyfrin, then checks the event against the published terms, confirms the existence of a loss and records the result onchain. The same process has protected Sentora’s USD Protected Vault and Protected RWA Vaults since October 6, and Kraken now brings it to one of the largest onchain earn programs in the industry.
With today’s integration, Kraken Protected Strategies USDC vault is enabled with protection that is clear, verifiable and independently reviewed, setting a template for how platforms can handle onchain risk. And because the cover enablement runs through Veda’s infrastructure, other exchanges, fintechs and vault operators building on Veda can switch on protection for their own products.
About Firelight
Firelight is an onchain cover protocol that establishes a protection layer for the infrastructure behind digital asset products. Platforms enable cover on transparent, verifiable terms registered onchain, while stakers back that cover through non-custodial vaults using bonded XRP on the Flare Network to earn protocol emissions generated by the protocol’s operations and the coverage fees it captures.
Every cover event is validated by the Firelight Risk Consortium, an independent panel of security and risk firms. Firelight’s contracts are audited by OpenZeppelin, Coinspect, and 0xMacro, with a competitive audit hosted on Immunefi. Firelight was incubated by Sentora and receives technical support services from Sentinel Labs, which just raised an $8 million seed round led by Gumi Cryptos Capital. Learn more.
About Kraken
Founded in 2011, Kraken is one of the world’s longest-standing and most secure crypto platforms globally. Kraken clients trade more than 600 digital assets, traditional assets such as U.S. futures and U.S.-listed stocks and ETFs, and 6 different national currencies, including GBP, EUR, USD, CAD, CHF, and AUD. Trusted by millions of institutions, professional traders and consumers, Kraken is one of the fastest, most liquid and performant trading platforms available.
Kraken’s suite of products and services includes the Kraken App, Kraken Pro, the Krak App, Kraken Institutional, Kraken’s onchain offerings and the Ninja Trader retail trading platform. Across these offerings, clients can buy, sell, stake, earn rewards, send and receive assets, custody holdings, and access advanced trading, derivatives, and portfolio management tools.
Kraken has set the industry standard for transparency and client trust, and it was the first crypto platform to conduct Proof of Reserves. It complies with regulations and laws applicable to its business, while actively protecting client privacy and maintaining the highest security standards.
For more information about Kraken, please visit www.kraken.com.
About Sentora
Sentora is the platform fintechs, neobanks, and exchanges use to build onchain products, providing the infrastructure enablingto make every app to earn. Its Earn OS combines onchain yield strategies, risk management, protection, and distribution in one platform, powering solutions from embedded earn features to stablecoin and tokenized asset growth programs. 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 it at scale. It curates the vaults behind the Kraken Protected Strategies USDC program, which passed $800 million in deposits within 9 months, and its strategies support platforms including PayPal, EtherFi, Ripple and Aave.
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