Kraken USDC vault gets Firelight cover with 30-day terms

Firelight said Oct. 15 that its onchain cover for defined failures is live on Kraken Protected Strategies USDC, a vault in Kraken DeFi Earn, which has taken more than $800 million in deposits, according to Kraken.

Sentora curates the vault and incubated Firelight, the release said, so the cover provider has ties to the vault's curator. The release gives no cover amount, capacity or premium, which leaves the size of the protection unclear.

USDC is 24% of stablecoins, and the vault holds that exposure

Stablecoins total $302.8 billion and USDC accounts for $72.8 billion of that, or 24.0% by our calculation ($72.8 billion / $302.8 billion), according to DefiLlama's stablecoin data on Oct. 16.

Kraken DeFi Earn has more than $800 million from about 100,000 depositors, The Paypers reported Oct. 16, citing Sentora data. That is about $8,000 each by our calculation: $800 million / 100,000.

The Financial Stability Board (FSB) published a note on global stablecoin arrangements on Oct. 12 and said it will enhance monitoring of cross-border vulnerabilities.

By the numbers

Terms are registered onchain and reset every 30 days

Firelight cover is enabled on Kraken Protected Strategies USDC, formerly Boosted USDC, which runs on Veda's infrastructure and is curated by Sentora, the company said. It covers smart contract exploits, oracle failures and redemption failures.

Terms are registered onchain before cover starts and reset each 30-day epoch, with validated payouts released to the vault, the company said.

Firelight does not decide its own claims, the company said. ZeroShadow publishes an exploit report, and the Firelight Risk Consortium, five firms including Hypernative and Cyfrin, checks it against the published terms.

Marcel Ohngemach, product lead for DeFi at Kraken, said depositors have allocated more than $800 million since the vaults launched in January. Stakers back the cover with bonded XRP on the Flare Network, the company said.

The FSB said global stablecoins "may give rise to financial stability vulnerabilities" in its Oct. 12 note.

The note covers stablecoins in general, not Firelight or DeFi vaults. It speaks to the asset the Kraken vault holds, not to the cover.

How we got here

• January 2026: Kraken launches its DeFi Earn vaults, according to The Paypers.
• Oct. 6, 2026: Firelight goes live on Sentora's USD Protected Vault and Protected RWA Vaults, the company said.
• Oct. 12, 2026: The FSB publishes its stablecoin note.
• Oct. 15, 2026: Firelight announces cover on the Kraken USDC vault, the company said.

What to watch: the first epoch reset and the cover amount

Cover terms reset every 30 days. If the first epoch began at launch on Oct. 15, the first reset falls on Nov. 14 (our calculation: Oct. 15 plus 30 days); the release gives no start date.

The release does not say how much cover the vault carries or what it costs. Those figures, and a first claim decision by the Firelight Risk Consortium, would show how the model works in practice.

How we reported this: Firelight supplied the integration details, the claims process and the quotes in an Oct. 15 release; market figures come from the linked DefiLlama, The Paypers and FSB pages, and the 24.0%, $8,000 and Nov. 14 figures are our calculations: $72.8 billion / $302.8 billion, $800 million / 100,000, and Oct. 15 plus 30 days.