Personal research project — paper-testing & tuning, not raising capital.
Paper research · advisory · not live

Rates Desk · on-chain interest-rate & basis sleeve

An engine that prices the disagreement between Pendle implied yield, lending rates and perp funding — and refuses books where the high rate is just unpriced tail.

What it is, plainly

Not a "yield finder". It is a pricing engine: it decomposes every quoted rate into genuine carry and tail-risk compensation, and only takes the part that is honest carry.

Status

Paper research. Advisory — it opens no live positions. Every verdict is deterministic and hashed (LLM forbidden in the risk gate). Benchmarked against the ~3.4% RWA floor.

The four trade shapes

Stage and net APY are from the promotion backtest snapshot (backtest / walk-forward), not realized carry. These are candidate figures: in the backtest the working shapes clear the ~3.4% RWA floor. The live paper track is still short (~1 week) and does not yet beat the floor — see the live section below. BasisHedge is shown honestly blocked.

FixedCarry Paper candidate
6.09% net APY (backtest) beats 3.4% floor (backtest)

Lock a Pendle fixed (PT) rate that is genuine carry, not unpriced tail. Hold to maturity; no leverage.

LeveredCarry Paper candidate
4.96% net APY (backtest) beats 3.4% floor (backtest)

The same priced carry, modestly levered against the lending rate when the spread is real and exit liquidity covers the size.

BasisHedge Blocked — no hedge
net APY (backtest)

Carry hedged with a forward-funding short — would be β≈0. Blocked: Boros has no keyless/permissionless venue yet, so the hedge never forms. Reported as zero, never fabricated.

RateMatrix Paper candidate
6.09% net APY (backtest) beats 3.4% floor (backtest)

Cross-venue rate arbitrage: capture the disagreement between PT-implied, lending and funding rates across the matrix of venues.

Validated on 2.5 yr + 3 stress events

The refusal engine fired early: toxic ezETH / rsETH were vetoed before the depeg events (Aug-2024, Apr-2026), not in hindsight. In the backtest, the survivor book beats the 3.4% floor through every stress (backtest verdict — not the realized live track).

Window

≈2.5 yr history

Stress events

3 (depegs / funding flips)

Refusal fired

before the event

Honest caveat

Deflated Sharpe is degenerate for locked carry (near-zero variance by construction), so the GO does not rest on Sharpe. The GO is a backtest verdict — "net APY beats floor" in-sample, out-of-sample and through stress. It is not a realized track: the live paper carry is still accumulating (see below) and does not yet beat the floor.

Methodology & gate definitions →

Live paper track — the rates desk, accruing

source: static / offline ·

The validated FixedCarry sleeve now runs live in paper — accruing a forward track.

The validated FixedCarry sleeve runs live in paper (no capital) via com.spa.rates_desk_paper, accruing a forward track. This is advisory research — not the go-live track, not real capital — but it's the same engine that will run live, recorded transparently. From /api/rates-desk/track.

This track just started this sprint — it is an early forward record, not a long history. Below is "N days so far", honestly.

Days accrued

Cumulative return

Current equity (paper)

Date Equity (paper) net APY
Track starting — no ticks yet.

The refusal log

source: static / offline ·

We publish what we refuse, not just what we trade.

This is the credibility artifact. Each row is a hashed gate verdict (ENTRY or REFUSAL) with its yield decomposition haircuts. A live feed from /api/rates-desk/decisions, most recent first.

Loading the decision log…

Proof of refusal — verifiable decision log

source: static / offline

Every decision — what we harvested AND what we refused — is hashed into a tamper-evident chain.

Anyone can verify we didn't rewrite history. We publish our refusals, not just our wins. The server re-derives the whole chain from /api/rates-desk/proof and reports whether it is intact.

verifying chain… chain length:

Head hash (fingerprint of the in-window history)

Head is a re-based sliding-window mirror (last 2000 decisions): stable across appends, re-bases when old rows are evicted. The immutable all-time ledger is audit_chain.jsonl.

Verdict Underlying Reason Haircut Payload hash
Loading the proof chain…

How to verify

The chain is append-only. Each entry hashes the prior head (SHA-256), so flipping any past decision changes its hash — and the next entry no longer links to it, breaking the chain. A green badge means a from-scratch recompute of every hash agreed: history was not rewritten.

RateSurface

source: static / offline ·

The current fixed/implied-rate quotes (PT / lending / boros) the engine scans. From /api/rates-desk/surface.

Underlying Kind Venue Quoted TVL Exit liq. Hedge
Loading the rate surface…

Opportunity scan: /api/rates-desk/opportunities — current shapes ranked by net edge.

⚠ Personal Research Project: SPA is a personal research project in paper validation and tuning. Not a regulated financial service. Not raising capital. Not investment advice.

Paper Trading Disclosure: All performance data reflects simulated trading on a virtual $100,000 USDC portfolio. Current paper APY: ~3.6% (variable, not a forecast). Simulated performance does not account for live slippage, liquidity impact, or smart contract execution risk. We reset our own track: only days with a real cycle log count (currently 10/30, anchor 2026-06-22). Go-live target: ~2026-07-21 — contingent on GoLiveChecker 29/29 (currently 27/29 NOT READY). See /track-record.

Not a Regulated Service: SPA is a personal research project at the paper-testing stage. This does not constitute investment advice, financial advice, or a solicitation to invest in any jurisdiction. Consult qualified professionals before making investment decisions.

DeFi-specific risks: Smart contract vulnerabilities and exploits · Protocol insolvency · Stablecoin de-pegging · Oracle manipulation · Regulatory actions · Technology failure. Funds in DeFi protocols are not covered by any investor compensation scheme.