x402-native · built on Injective

Earn yield on idle agent funds. Auto-exit before a depeg.

Keel is a yield-bearing synthetic dollar for autonomous agents, with an on-chain guardrail that exits your balance to USDC the moment the peg drifts past a set threshold.

Building this now. Not yet live, early access only.

The tradeoff

Idle agent dollars are stuck with a bad choice.

An autonomous agent holding a treasury has two options today. Neither is good. So agents default to plain USDC and leave yield on the table, because stability beats everything.

Option A · hold USDC

Stable, but earns nothing

Cash sits idle. The agent stays safe and liquid, but every hour of idle balance is yield it never captures.

yield while idle
Option B · hold yield-stable

Earns yield, but can depeg

Yield-bearing dollars carry depeg risk. An agent transacting autonomously can't watch a peg and unwind a position at 3am.

depeg risk an agent can't babysit

Keel removes the tradeoff: earn while idle, exit before it breaks.

How it works

Three primitives. One safe loop.

An agent holds the yield-bearing token, spends the stable unit over x402, and the guardrail watches the peg the whole time.

01

Hold skUSD

Idle balance sits in skUSD, the yield-bearing token. It accrues funding-rate and staking yield while the agent waits for work.

earning · self-custodial

02

Spend kUSD over x402

When the agent buys data, inference, or another agent's service, it spends kUSD, a stable ~$1 unit, natively over the x402 payment protocol.

~$1.00 · machine-payable

03

Guardrail auto-exits

An on-chain guardrail watches the peg. If it drifts past the threshold, the agent's balance auto-exits to USDC: no human, no babysitting.

enforced by contract

The differentiator

The guardrail is the product.

Yield isn't the wedge. Every yield-stable token offers that. Keel's wedge is the automatic exit. You set a threshold; the contract enforces it.

  • →Always watching. An on-chain check tracks the peg continuously, not on a schedule.
  • →Drift past the line, you're out. If the peg crosses your threshold, the balance auto-converts to USDC.
  • →No human in the loop. Agents transact 24/7; the exit does too. Nothing to monitor, nothing to unwind by hand.
Watch the guardrail trip and exit to USDC.
skUSD · live guardrail Within guardrail
$1.0004 / threshold ±0.50%
guardrail band
status · holding skUSD exit target · USDC
Where the yield comes from

Honest about the engine.

skUSD earns from a delta-neutral hedge run on Injective: a funding-rate position offset against the collateral so the dollar exposure stays flat, plus staking yield on idle collateral. Returns float with the market. There is no fixed rate, and we don't quote one.

01
Funding-rate yield

From a delta-neutral hedge: dollar exposure held flat while the funding rate is captured.

02
Staking yield

Idle collateral earns native staking yield within the Cosmos / Injective ecosystem.

∿
Variable, not promised

Rates move with market conditions. We won't quote an APY before it's real.

Why it's trustworthy

On-chain, by default.

The whole point is that an agent doesn't have to trust an operator's word. The mechanics live where the agent can verify them.

Self-custodial

Balances stay in the agent's control. No deposit to a custodian.

Hedge runs on-chain

The hedge executes on Injective, not on a centralized exchange you have to trust.

Guardrail in contract

The auto-exit is enforced by code, not an operator's discretion.

Built on Injective

Settles in the Cosmos ecosystem, with finality and low fees agents need.

FAQ

Straight answers.

Is this live?
No. Keel is in early access and not yet live. kUSD and skUSD are not deployed for public use. We're sharing the design now to find developers building agents that transact, and to pressure-test the guardrail with real use cases. Join the waitlist to get involved early.
How is the yield generated?
From two on-chain sources: funding-rate yield captured by a delta-neutral hedge (dollar exposure held flat), and staking yield on idle collateral within the Injective / Cosmos ecosystem. Returns are variable and depend on market conditions. We don't quote a fixed rate or an APY.
What happens in a depeg?
The guardrail watches the peg on-chain. If it drifts past the threshold you've set, your balance auto-exits to USDC, without a human in the loop. The intent is to limit exposure to a sustained depeg, but no mechanism can eliminate risk: exits depend on on-chain liquidity and conditions at the time, and may not execute at exactly the threshold.
What is x402?
x402 is a payment protocol that lets machines pay for resources programmatically, using the HTTP 402 Payment Required status as a native settlement step. It's how an autonomous agent can pay for an API call, inference, or another agent's service without a human checkout. kUSD is designed to be spent natively over x402.
Who is this for?
Developers building autonomous agents that hold and spend value, buying data, inference or compute, or paying other agents. If your agent carries an idle treasury in USDC and you'd rather it earned yield without taking on depeg risk you can't monitor, Keel is built for you.
Early access

Put idle agent funds to work, safely.

Join the waitlist for early access and tell us what your agents transact. We're building with developers now.

Questions? Reach us at hello@keelusd.com

Disclaimer. Keel is experimental software in development and is not yet live. Nothing here is investment, financial, or legal advice. kUSD and skUSD are synthetic assets that carry risk, including loss of peg and loss of funds. Yields are variable, not guaranteed, and never risk-free. The guardrail is a risk-reduction mechanism, not a guarantee against loss. Do your own research.