YieldNest

Table of Contents

When YieldNest's $5.2M contribution round closed in April 2024, the restaking landscape was already a knife fight. EigenLayer had proven the primitive worked, and every other team was racing to package dual-yield mechanics into a liquid token before someone else did. Most got partway. The good ones nailed Ethereum but stopped at one chain. The fast ones nailed packaging but skipped the risk-adjustment work that keeps the product safe at scale.

YieldNest, founded by Amadeo Brands in 2023, was building all of it. Risk-adjusted strategies, multi-asset across ETH/BNB/BTC/USD/RWA, multi-chain from day one. We came in to co-build the protocol through the pre-mainnet window.

Co-building the protocol

Contribution round closed 17 April 2024. Mainnet shipped 14 May 2024. Six weeks. Engineering, design, integrations: all of it had to land inside that window before the launch slot moved. We embedded as a product co-building partner with engineers, product scoping, and integration plumbing for a team shipping fast against an investor-facing deadline that wasn't going to slip.

It didn't. ynETH went live on time, the structure we built carried the rest of the product line (ynLSDe, ynBNB, then the MAX Vaults), and YieldNest peaked at $500M+ TVL.

The story so far

The contribution round closed on 17 April 2024. Faculty Group led, with Backed VC, Proof Capital, LVT Capital, Contango, Mozaik Capital, Kahuna, Rana Capital, Insignius Capital, and CKC alongside, plus angels including Michael Egorov of Curve, Loi Luu of Kyber, Sam Kazemian of Frax, Winthorpe and C2TP of Convex, and Steve Kokinos of Algorand. Mainnet shipped on 14 May 2024 with the launch of ynETH, an ETH liquid restaking token built directly on EigenLayer rather than wrapping an existing LST.

ynLSDe followed in August 2024, accepting already-staked ETH from Lido, FRAX, Origin Protocol, and Mantle and layering EigenLayer rewards on top. ynBNB shipped on BNB Chain in September 2024 as the first liquid restaking token on that ecosystem, built on Lista's slisBNB and integrating Kernel, Karak, and Binominal. Symbiotic integration came online during 2024, letting YieldNest depositors accrue Symbiotic points alongside the LRT yield.

The YND token launched on 3 June 2025 with a two-token governance model. YND stakes into veYND, which receives all protocol revenue via buyback-and-distribute. By the time of TGE the product line had broadened beyond LRTs into a set of MAX Vaults: ynETHx, ynBNBx, ynBTCk, ynUSDx, ynRWAx, plus a STAK combo for Curve LP staking. Each MAX Vault unifies multiple DeFi strategies behind a single tokenised position.

Products

ynETH

ynETH is YieldNest's flagship LRT, minted by depositing ETH directly into EigenLayer-restaked positions. It accrues consensus rewards plus restaking rewards in one liquid token. Mainnet launched on 14 May 2024.

ynLSDe

ynLSDe is the wrapper for users who already hold liquid-staking derivatives. It accepts staked ETH from Lido, FRAX, Origin Protocol, and Mantle, and layers EigenLayer rewards on top. Launched 21 August 2024.

ynBNB

ynBNB is the BNB Chain LRT, the first of its kind on that network. Built on top of Lista's slisBNB with partnerships across Kernel, Karak, and Binominal. Launched September 2024.

MAX Vaults

The MAX Vault line is the 2025 evolution: a unified asset that combines multiple DeFi strategies with rebalancing and Layer-1 settlement. Each variant targets a different underlying (ynETHx for ETH, ynBNBx for BNB, ynBTCk for BTC, ynUSDx for USD, ynRWAx for RWA) but presents one liquid token to depositors.

Launch results

Metric	Snapshot
Peak TVL	$500M+
Capital raised	$5.2M contribution round (Apr 2024); YND TGE (June 2025)
Backers	Faculty Group, Backed VC, Proof Capital, plus angels Michael Egorov, Loi Luu, Sam Kazemian, Steve Kokinos
Live networks	Ethereum, BNB Chain
Audits	ChainSecurity, Zokyo, Composable Security, LlamaRisk, Hypernative, 0xNest AI

The six-week launch window is the point. Holdex came in before mainnet, helped ship the protocol surface under deadline, and left YieldNest with a structure that carried the rest of the product line.