Blog
News, updates, and insights from the Gearbox Protocol team.
GEAR Token, Protocol and What Next
At Gearbox, we are building global lending rails for tokenised assets, designed to operate at scale and endure scrutiny. That mission comes with responsibility, and it also means confronting hard moments directly. A delisting from an exchange is not routine, and it is not something we dismiss or minimise. It
Recent Posts
The End of Looping on Gearbox
Over the last few years, Gearbox became synonymous with looping. But we must admit: looping was never how leverage was supposed to work in DeFi. It was a workaround. A clever hack that relied on DEX liquidity and flashloans to bypass the hard execution composability required. For five years, this
Reclaiming Composability: Why DeFi’s Most Important Advantage Remains Underused
Composability has long been positioned as DeFi’s strongest structural advantage. In principle, it enables financial systems to interact seamlessly, allowing users and institutions to assemble complex strategies by combining independent protocols. This capability should unlock efficiencies that traditional finance cannot replicate. Yet despite its prominence, composability in practice remains
What Happens When Oracles Think Twice: Permissionless Oracle Design
DeFi lending relies on one invisible but essential component: oracles. These are systems that tell protocols what assets are worth. When they fail, the consequences are immediate: hacked pools, bad debt, and capital flight. But when these oracles are designed well, you deliver superior UX and reduce the risk significantly
Migrating to Permissionless: Guide for Borrowers
Driven by shifting industry trends, clearer regulations, and growing institutional demand for onchain credit rails, the DAO launched Gearbox Permissionless. Just six months later, Permissionless now accounts for over 70% of total TVL, has 4×ed our speed to market, and future-proofed Gearbox’s growth trajectory. The Permissionless model was
Migrating to Permissionless: Guide for Lenders
Driven by shifting industry trends, clearer regulations, and growing institutional demand for onchain credit rails, the DAO launched Gearbox Permissionless. Just six months later, Permissionless now accounts for over 70% of total TVL, has 4×ed our speed to market, and future-proofed Gearbox’s growth trajectory. The Permissionless model was
DVstETH: Access 40X Leverage With 0 Slippage
Decentralized exchanges (DEXes) have long been a vital backbone for lending protocols, enabling borrowers to swap assets and create leveraged positions, either through recursive loops or swapping of leveraged spot assets. However, this reliance on DEXes comes with a hidden cost, in the form of Slippage and DEX trading fees.
Re7 curated tBTC and uptBTC market: Gearbox Permissionless
Re7 curated BTCfi market is now live! Users can now lend tBTC by Threshold to earn passive yields or borrow tBTC to access up to 6x leverage on uptBTC by Mezo. This marks a pivotal step for bringing Bitcoin-native assets into scalable, composable DeFi lending markets. This deployment is powered
Gearbox on BNB: Lending, Leverage and Loans
Gearbox is now officially live on BNB Chain! The deployment brings Gearbox's battle-tested lending pools and capital-efficient Credit Accounts to the BNB ecosystem. The instance has been curated permissionlessly by Chaos Labs, it marks a milestone first for Gearbox. In this article, we highlight what Gearbox brings to the BNB
K3 Instance: USDT Credit Market
A significant milestone for any decentralized protocol is having its infrastructure adopted by institutions that expand their operations and services on-chain. Today, Gearbox has reached that milestone. A Gearbox instance operated and curated by K3 is now live, bringing institutional grade lending opportunities for users. This instance empowers K3 Capital
Gearbox's Lido Instance: Isolated (Re)Staking Market
With over $1 Billion in volume, 2 years of being live and proven adoption, the most utilised protocol on Gearbox now gets its own instance. Unlocking unparalleled capital efficiency for staking, a dedicated Lido instance of Gearbox is now live! The dedicated instance provides users the opportunity to borrow wstETH
Gearbox Expands to Sonic: Lending, Leverage, and Points
Gearbox is now officially live on Sonic! This deployment brings Gearbox's battle-tested lending pools and highly capital-efficient leveraged yield farms to Sonic's ecosystem, benefiting lenders, who earn passive yields, and borrowers, who can access leverage to trade or farm efficiently. In this article, we'll explain why Gearbox is deploying on
Gearbox Protocol: 2024 Recap and Wind of Change
Gearbox began with the idea of “composable leverage” in 2021, empowering DeFi users to maximize capital efficiency. Gearbox continues delivering on that vision to date. Over the years, it grew to more than that. For example, offering multicollateral loans on your portfolio in just one click. This product has been
Leveraged Pendle PTs: Leveraged Fixed Income
Pendle Finance has established itself as a prominent fixed-yield protocol with over $4 billion in Total Value Locked (TVL) and $10 billion in total trading volume. Pendle Finance brings fixed yields to users through tokenised yield trading. While fixed yields offer users a steady source of known returns, leveraging them
Leveraged RWAs: Sky on Gearbox
Boasting $13B in TVL, 600K+ users and 8.5% APYs, Sky assets are now live on Gearbox. Sky, previously Maker, is one of the most iconic DeFi rebrands. Maker's leveraged sDAI has been one of the most consistent strategies on Gearbox, generating double digit stablecoin yields. Like Maker, Sky aims
Renzo: ezpz loans
Imagine you have a valuable watch collection, but there's a yacht you want to buy. Instead of selling your watches for the yacht, you convince a watch dealer to loan you money against your collection. You then leave your watches with the lender until you return the money. But what
Gauges: Democratising Borrow Rates
This week saw the rise of macroeconomic experts across CT. Will Powell cut rates by 25 BPS? Or by 50 BPS? CT waited with bated breath to know how the Fed would affect our internet coins. While the build-up to the event was fascinating, it also outlined the importance of
Leveraged Lombard: Unlock BTC Yields
Through a decade of apprehensions, boating accidents, and laser-eyed belief, BTC has now become a $1 Trillion asset. While BTC is still on course to cement its status as a global store of value, the asset's market size creates significant opportunities- opportunities for BTC to become productive and for ecosystems
The State of DeFi Lending and Gearbox DAO Self-Evaluation
Dearest Gentle Reader, Gearbox Protocol and Gearbox DAO are nearing 3 years of being live. This journey has come with many re-evaluations, security improvements, and product iterations. Understanding the past and the present is vital to make sure one chooses an informed path forward - and that’s the goal
Multicollateral Loans: Flexible Borrowing
Imagine you have a valuable watch collection, but there's a yacht you want to buy. Instead of selling your watches for the yacht, you convince a watch dealer to loan you money against your watch collection. You then leave your watches with the lender until you return the money. But
Hello, Mellow: Symbiotic LRT Vaults
Over the year, restaking has grown sizeably. With its ability to extend Ethereum's security to different systems, restaking has grown in TVL and mindshare, sparking discussions. These discussions have ranged from how high yields are generated through restaking to the potential additional risks induced by it. Risk management becomes crucial
Kelp on Arbitrum: 3X the rewards
Kelp DAO has grown to become one of the largest LRTs with $600M+ in TVL. A noteworthy source of growth for Kelp's rsETH has been the introduction of Kelp Miles. Miles are a mechanism to reward loyal users with a potential future token. Leverage, thus, enables users to maximise these
10X the ezFriendly Leverage
With the passing of GIP-143, Gearbox DAO approved increasing the LTV(Liquidation Threshold Value) for ezETH, bringing the maximum possible leverage to 10X. The change in the LTV was voted on based on improved fundamental specifications for ezETH, which make Friendly Leverage on ezETH a possibility. Friendly leverage enables users
ARB and GEAR rewards: STIMMIES 💸
At Gearbox DAO, our aim is to be the leading onchain prime brokerage for the whole DeFi space. Our V3's modular architecture makes adding leverage opportunities faster and safer than ever. But to achieve broader adoption, providing these opportunities at scale is critical. Scaling on ETH mainnet only, though, can
Gearbox crvUSD Pool: Llama LM
New day and we already have the Llama's making it a GM with a special CRV boosted LM for the crvUSD pool. The crvUSD pool is now the 5th stablecoin pool to go live on Gearbox's lending market. The pool aims at giving lenders more choice in terms assets they
How may I Kelp you? 3X Friendly Miles
Points have been one of the most profitable opportunity in 2024. Leveraged points have further gone on to produce over $30M worth of incentives for Gearbox users. This value creation has led to a demand surge for LRTs. So how do Kelp and Gearbox intend to fulfil your demands and
Friendly Leverage: Points S2
Points farming has had its fair share of roller-coaster-emotion moments. From EL points 10Xing on whales to depegs to massive airdrops in a short period. Over the last 2 months, points have made us euphoric and depressed within a span of days. While we can't control what happens with the
Gearbox: Modular Leverage. ██████████████ in 2024?
Modular leverage and modular lending - how to build this primitive in the most cohesive way? Diving into different protocols, risks for lenders and borrowers, etc.
Expanding Leveraged Restaking
The key goal for Gearbox V3 was to expand. Expand the offerings, expand revenues, expand TVL, expand composable leverage to more chains. Less than 4 months after V3's launch, we are seeing this expansion happen with the TVL now close to $350M and almost all metrics making an all time
The $GEAR Wars
Leveraged restaking has now brought in over $105M in restaked ETH. It all kicked off with Gearbox DAO introducing EtherFi's weETH, which raced to a 10,000 ETH restaked mark, after which Renzo's ezETH was added as well. Interestingly, since ezETH's introduction, Renzo has added over 21.4K ETH, while
Leveraged Ethena: Earn up to 90X Shards
Ethena's USDe and sUSDe are now live with upto 9X leverage on Gearbox. This addition follows EtherFi, Renzo, Curve, Yearn, Uniswap and multiple other protocols and assets Gearbox has enabled leverage on as we keep working to create DeFi's leverage layer. The below article gives you an overview of Ethena's
Leveraged Restaking: How and Point Math
The article is from Feb'24 and might have information that is now outdated. In case of any clarifications do reach out to us on TG or Discord. The most efficient LRT strategies to earn EigenLayer and other points are now LIVE, starting with Ether.Fi! We did a piece earlier
Leverage Restaking and… Leveraged Points?!
We know, we know. There's not much that you need to say beyond "Earn 10 times more EIGEN and LRT points" to sell this concept. However, understanding why restaking changes the fabric of society and where the yields come from - will help users learn and make better informed decisions.
Gearbox DAO Update: PURE Dec'23
GM, GM to all the believers who now think GM stands for Get Margin. December'23 just like every other December(Gearbox Deployment in '21, 0xCider in '22) was a significant month for the DAO and the protocol with V3 being deployed and PURE being launched. Want to catch up and
Gearbox DAO Update: Sept-Nov'23
As we bid adieu to the year, let us do it with the final transparency update regarding everything that happened and was executed by Gearbox DAO between the months September to November of 2023. Between Curve V2 deployment, V3 Upgrade and the alpha testing launch of Gearbox PURE, this Autumn
Gearbox PURE: Margin Trade with DEXes' Deep Liquidity
The wait is finally over, meet Gearbox PURE. A Margin Trading based leverage product that enables you to trade natively on Uniswap, Curve and your favourite DEXes. PURE offers the deepest onchain liquidity for leverage without having any LPs or counter-parties trade against you. PURE at the moment is going
Gearbox V3 Launch Steps
STRAP IN, STRAP ON… hol’ up, hold up! Excuse my excitement. After all, this is a serious establishment! At least the developer & the security people of Gearbox DAO. Others and writers… Well, those are totally deranged people. As a result, we apologize for a 1 hour long piece that is
Gearbox V3: Evolving the Governance Model
It's been 2 years since Gearbox Protocol went live with a DAO first model. Focussing on handing over the protocol to the DAO and empowering the community to turn into DAO contributors. 2 years down the line and the DAO run protocol is about to launch its V3. But, as
Lending meets Account Abstraction: Gearbox V3
One of the outcomes of crypto being truly open is that an individual can decide how much risk they want exposure to. While choosing the kind of exposure one wants is upto them, it's important that the protocol is able to offer the choice to the user. Gearbox V1 and
Gearbox Protocol V3: The Onchain Credit Layer
Here we are, exactly a year since the launch of Gearbox V2. A year since the introduction of leveraged staking, leveraged LPing, and more. A year since Gearbox TVL rose to $100M+ in 3 days and displayed the possibilities of capital efficient credit to the world. But that’s all
Building and expanding the Onchain Credit Layer - Gearbox
What factors exactly drive this demand for credit, though? How do you capture it, and grow it? How much can you even borrow and with what mechanism while maintaining the best possible standards to keep out bad debt?
The Transformative Potential of Cross-Chain DeFi in Shaping the Future of Decentralized Finance
Introduction In the rapidly evolving landscape of Decentralized Finance (DeFi), one idea has been gaining significant traction: Cross-Chain DeFi. We're going to dive into exactly what it means, why it might shake up the world of Decentralized Finance (DeFi), and why it will probably be a big deal in the
A look into the world of DeFi Lending
DeFi lending is a revolutionary concept that has the potential to redefine the traditional financial landscape.
Liquid Staking Derivatives: A New Frontier in DeFi
In the ever-evolving landscape of Decentralized Finance (DeFi), one area that has been gaining significant traction is Liquid Staking Derivatives (LSDs), also frequently known as Liquid Staking Tokens (LSTs). As a relatively new concept, LSDs are reshaping the way we perceive staking, offering a solution to one of its most
gHearbox Hour with Element Finance: leveraging fixed & variable rates?
We are back from the radio silence! A lot of work has been happening behind the scenes with v2 audits starting up, research for new protocols’ adapters, and onboarding contributors to Gearbox DAO. All that you can find in the next monthly community update. Here is the previous one: Gearbox
Gearbox DAO: Retroactive Public Contributions Funding & Jan Recap
A fancy title to bait you! Jk, it’s real. This article is a recap of the 1st month of Gearbox Protocol life as well as Gearbox DAO coordination so far. Buckle up, there is a lot to go through. For example, unexpected rewards to the first active contributors - which
>Hello World! Source code is open. Bug bounty and audits.
Hi there, gearpersons! This article will be short and on-point. First of all, Gearbox is now officially a DAO: the protocol control has been given to the community + community-enacted multisig. Now let’s get to business! Source code is open + verified on Etherscan First of all, 10 months of daily
Credit Account Mining - GUIDE. Fuelling up for the launch of Gearbox!
Here is an amazing final dashboard by @k06a! - $7.3M spent for deploying the contracts - 0.35E per account average - 5,000 accounts minedhttps://t.co/RrlLwwRNsv [if you wanna know how to join the DAO and what to do, see the discord link in the RTed
The path to launch and first proposals
DAO-First, DAO-First, DAO-First… What does it mean? It means that initial members aka ex-core team - give the raw code to the community who then decide how to start the protocol. That is: deciding on pools and assets, allowed contracts, multisig signers, and everything else! That’s what we are going
Leverage 2.0 - Credit Account as a DeFi primitive.
Hi everyone! We are back with another technical-conceptual piece. But before we dig in, just a quick update on what’s going on. The governance launch has been split into a few phases to allow various communities to participate (hint: stick around in Discord). We have upgraded and frozen the
ETH Amsterdam 2022 Recap: amazing submissions & developer interest
GM Gearheads, we are here to report back on the activities & traction from ETH Amsterdam / ETHGlobal hackathon that took place last week. It was amazing to see so many of you in person! In fact, it was the first time some of the core DAO members had met in real
GEAR Token and Governance: Reverse Voting Escrow
We’re in the middle of the launch ceremony - you know it, right? If not, see the DAO-First Launch timeline. So, what do we have for today? Today, our planet is being invaded by the jawas, empire clones, the jedi, and other galactic species! But wait a second… it’s
Product Evolution from an idea to an app: 0 to 1. Contributors united!
GM everyone! Don’t you find it super interesting to know why and how products do pivots and prioritize certain features? If you see how tradeoffs and decisions were made, you can really understand the overall design. And it has been quite a journey. Together with early contributors, testers, and
App beta testing on Kovan with DegenScore & lobsterdao! Docs are open.
We are proud and excited to release the first part of the Gearbox machine before it all goes live on mainnet: beta test of the interface to Gearbox Protocol. What other pieces are next? A few stages of token distribution and DAO formation, open-sourcing contracts, multisig ceremony, and then deployment
App beta testing on Kovan with DegenScore & lobsterdao! Docs are open.
We are proud and excited to release the first part of the Gearbox machine before it all goes live on mainnet: beta test of the interface to Gearbox Protocol. What other pieces are next? A few stages of token distribution and DAO formation, open-sourcing contracts, multi-sig ceremony, and then deployment
Hello, world! This is Gearbox - Generalized Leverage Protocol.
We are very sorry to interrupt you from your daily jpeg hunt, but maybe the following writeup could be as interesting to you. To make sure we follow the latest trend, let’s start off with a weird and hopefully funny story to get you into the mood - accompanied by