Written by: Rightsideonly
Compiled by: AIdidiaoJP, Foresight News
Note: This article is only for project observation and information organization. Most of the projects mentioned are in early stages with high uncertainty. Readers should make independent judgments and be aware of risks.
This week I talked about the projects I paid attention to and learned about during the conference. Some of them are still in anonymous development and waiting for team updates. The following five are projects I am actively tracking: Mezzanine, INFINIT, IRIS, RISEx, and Boros. To be clear, there is no conflict of interest; I just think Boros is really cool.
Mezzanine: Splitting a single asset or yield strategy into multiple tranches
Mezzanine builds structured vaults around a single asset or a single yield strategy, and then splits the vault into different tranches.
The junior tranche absorbs losses first and also takes a larger share of the yield; the senior tranche sits behind the buffer and earns a lower yield. An optional mezzanine tranche can also be set in between, usually with a longer withdrawal period.
Each vault also has a non-yielding base token that sits in a super-senior position and absorbs losses last. Deposits are first converted into this base token and then enter a certain tranche; this step is completed automatically by the App.
Mezzanine has not launched yet, but the first vault is fully described in the documentation, and the strategy inside it is already running elsewhere: Hastra Optimizer Vault. Users deposit USDC or wYLDS on Ethereum, and the strategy converts the funds into Hastra PRIME and AUTO, then loops through Morpho and Kamino; Aave, Exponent, and Pendle are listed as possible venues.
The reserve is $50,000, funded by the asset manager, and one month of vault yield is also placed in a custodial account. On the security side, the project has been audited by Sherlock and ChainSecurity and formally verified by Certora; partners listed on the official website include Pendle, Kamino, Upshift, and RedStone.
The split ratio between senior and junior tranches has not yet been announced. The documentation says that when the vault page opens, the base reward and risk premium ratios will be displayed; I will keep an eye on future updates.
INFINIT: Managed trading vault, live trading has produced about 32% annualized
INFINIT runs managed trading vaults and executes trades on Hyperliquid. External strategy managers operate them and must contribute their own capital as first-loss capital. The first vault is APEX MultiStrategy by APEX Quants, which began trading on July 30 and has so far performed in line with expectations.
The vault is based on $506,100 in USDC deposits and rose 7.18% in 82 days; as of October 20, it was 31.94% APR on the App's annualized basis.
The vault goes long and short on Hyperliquid, covering crypto assets, stocks, commodities, and indices, and relies on market regime identification to decide when to trade; when no underlying passes the scoring threshold, it stays in cash and waits.
Backtests show an annualized 163% over an 84-day window, with a maximum drawdown of 10.5%. The live 31.94% is lower than the manager's own conservative estimate of 40% to 90%, but far higher than most DeFi mining yields, so the next vault is worth looking forward to.
The IN token distributes part of the execution fees to stakers, is used to unlock App features, and comes with governance voting rights. Vault 1 will be redeemed on October 28, and the deposit window for Vault 2 is planned for October 28 to November 11. As of the time of writing, Vault 1 has 8 trading days left, and the strategy has already been validated in live trading.
IRIS: Overlaying fixed-rate, fixed-term loans on existing lending markets
IRIS overlays fixed-rate, fixed-term loans on top of existing lending markets. It does not build a separate interest rate market, but instead sits on top of Morpho Blue and Aave V3, so it does not need to bootstrap liquidity from scratch.
The mechanism is roughly as follows: market makers (solvers) sign off-chain quotes, and after the borrower accepts, the borrowing rate is locked until maturity, while the underlying venue still charges a floating rate. Solvers post margin to cover the gap between the fixed rate and the floating rate, earn the spread plus collateral yield, and then deduct the protocol fee.
Each loan is placed into a one-time "pod" (isolation chamber), with collateral and debt isolated separately and not mixed with other loans; positions can be refinanced across whitelisted platforms.
IRIS currently has no public TVL, loan volume, or issued token. There is still a lot to do, but if it works, it can open a new path for fixed-term loans without building new liquidity pools.
RISEx: A perpetual contract DEX with an order book running entirely on-chain
RISEx is a perpetual contract DEX whose order book runs entirely inside RISE's EVM. RISE runs on an Optimistic Rollup L2. There is no off-chain matching engine here; orders, matching, and settlement are all on-chain state, and other contracts can read them and trade based on them within the same transaction.
It currently tracks 43 perpetual markets, with about $39 million in open interest, so it still counts as a new project. Major coins offer up to 25x leverage, using USDC as collateral.
RISE has raised $8 million, including $4 million from Galaxy Ventures in June 2025; seed round investors include Vitalik Buterin and Stani Kulechov.
RISEx does not yet have a token. The RISE chain and RISEx describe themselves as "one team, one vision, one token." Mainnet access is still restricted and requires an invitation or referral from the waitlist.
Boros: Creating markets for various interest rates, starting with perpetual funding rates
Boros builds infrastructure for market inefficiencies, creating markets for various interest rates. Its current focus is perpetual funding rates: users can go long or short Yield Unit with leverage, converting floating funding rates into a fixed implied APR.
On October 15, Boros launched spread markets: ETH and BTC, with the underlying being Hyperliquid funding rate minus Gate funding rate. A position tracks the spread between the two venues; at launch, the short quote was about a 25% to 35% fixed APR.
How do both sides make money? Shorting the spread while hedging with perpetual contracts on both venues is delta-neutral and earns a fixed implied APR of about 25% to 35%. Going long the spread means collecting the actual spread at each settlement, as long as the actual spread remains above the fixed rate you pay.
Arbitrageurs continuously shorting will push the fixed rate down; longs then buy it cheaply. The actions of both sides create advantages for each other, and trading volume thus keeps growing.
Users can also execute fixed-rate trades through the CrossEx terminal. This is a free, open-source application that runs on your own machine. It scans all Boros markets, compares them with Gate CrossEx perpetual contracts, and calculates the net annualized return after fees and slippage; after selecting a market, it first locks the fixed-rate leg on Boros, then hedges the perpetual contract leg on Gate in the correct order. The interface shows the locked fixed APR, margin, whether it remains delta-neutral, and the expected return at maturity.
This sounds like a trading desk strategy, but it is not only trading desks doing it. User @gabavineb posted that after going long the spread for 25 days, a 9.19 ETH position earned 1.96 ETH, about 21%, and also wrote down the steps.
If you want to understand before putting funds in, Boros Academy explains the mechanics and common strategies: interest rate speculation, hedging your own funding costs, and delta-neutral arbitrage. Spending an afternoon on the Academy and then trying it with a small position is enough to understand.
