Veda and Kraken Bring Bitcoin Earn to 100+ Countries

Today, we’re expanding our partnership with Kraken with the launch of a new Veda vault that allows millions of Kraken users to easily earn bitcoin yield within the Kraken Earn platform. 

Kraken, and Krak consumers in 100+ countries can now earn variable yield on their BTC deposits with the power of embedded DeFi, without the headaches that come with wrapping Bitcoin, moving assets, or managing a crypto wallet.

"Bitcoin holders no longer have to choose between security, simplicity, and the ability to earn meaningful BTC yield. Expanding Kraken Earn to support bitcoin ensures users can now access sophisticated strategies through non-custodial vaults on the platform they already trust,” said Sunand Raghupathi, CEO and co-founder of Veda. 

Like the Kraken Earn stablecoin vaults, the Bitcoin Vault is powered by Veda’s modular BoringVault architecture, deployed on the Ink Layer-2 blockchain. 

Existing yield opportunities for Bitcoin remain few and far between. Bitcoin DeFi can involve significant friction, high fees, and low staking yields. Our vault stack solves these challenges by abstracting away common user pain points while enabling the vault’s curator, Sentora, to actively deploy the best strategy across multiple chains and protocols, offering BTC-denominated yield with speed and efficiency. 

As with all Veda vault deployments, the Kraken BTC Earn vault is non-custodial. This means that only depositors have the ability to withdraw or transfer their funds, which enhances vault security and user control. Users retain ownership of their funds via self-custodial Privy wallets that are created on the backend during the deposit process.

To get started, users can move BTC onto Kraken, buy it on the exchange, or simply begin the Earn deposit process, where the bitcoin purchase is built into the deposit flow. Users are able to opt in, review key details, and initiate the withdrawal process anytime. 

Kraken delivers a frontend experience that gives users easy access to onchain yield and keeps them on-platform, while our vault infrastructure handles the necessary blockchain actions on the backend including the deposit and withdrawal process, accounting, and onchain execution. 

"We've seen strong demand from Kraken's Bitcoin holders for an easy, reliable way to earn yield on the BTC they hold long-term," said John Zettler, Director of Product, Kraken Earn & Trade. "Bitcoin Vault was designed with that in mind. It makes earning rewards on Bitcoin a simple, intuitive experience, backed by the trust Kraken has built over 14 years in the industry."

The BTC vault swaps assets to kBTC, Kraken’s wrapped bitcoin, and executes the yield strategy determined by Sentora. While strategies and protocols used may change over time to optimize for the best risk-adjusted yield, this vault executes a supervised loan strategy leveraging Morpho’s open credit network. 

With Kraken Bitcoin Earn, Veda’s multichain-ready vault lives on Ink but is able to use BTC as collateral to deploy stablecoins across protocols on other chains like Ethereum. Our tech supports earning on any deposit asset, yield across protocols, automated swaps, autocompounding, crosschain migration, and more. 

Since the launch of Kraken DeFi Earn earlier this year, our vault infrastructure has powered over $2.2 million in total net yield generated across three stablecoin Earn vaults, with user deposits exceeding $245 million. The Advanced Strategies USDC Veda vault, also curated by Sentora, has outperformed benchmark since launch with a 30-day average net yield of 6%, Blockworks data shows. Since launch, Kraken has reported new user growth from its USDC Earn product, with vaults driving newcomers to its platform. 

Now, bitcoin holders on Kraken have an easy way to tap into the power of onchain finance, earning passive income on their conviction in the largest digital asset by market cap while retaining custody over their funds.