Delta-neutral synthetic dollar on Base. USDC mints kUSD through the PSM, and every kUSD is backed 1:1 by USDC reserves anyone can recompute from chain; backing is live and verifiable and sits near 100% today. The design pairs the collateral with a short perpetual hedge on Hyperliquid; that hedge engine is built and wired, but no hedge position is open right now, so the protocol currently runs as a fully USDC-reserved dollar while the delta-neutral book is seeded through Genesis. Stake kUSD into skUSD to receive the protocol's realized yield as the book distributes it. The published APY is a live model at target leverage, computed from the trailing Hyperliquid funding mean plus the Lido staking SMA with explicit deductions for strategy cost, dynamic insurance allocation, and protocol phase fee; it is not a record of realized distributions, and realized yield to date is small. Genesis phase: 0% performance fee while TVL is below $100k.

Every number Kerne publishes about itself is reproducible from public RPCs and public endpoints, with no Kerne-controlled infrastructure in the trust path. See Verify Kerne yourself.

Disambiguation: Kerne kUSD on Base is a different protocol from KernelDAO's KUSD on BNB Chain. Different teams, different chains. See kerne.fi/not-kerneldao.

The full address registry is in contracts-public/deployments/8453.json. The live KUSDPSM above is the 2026-07-10 redeploy, built from the frozen external-audit commit so the deployed bytecode matches the source under audit; the prior mint PSM (0x07eBb486..., 2026-06-16 ceremony) had MINTER_ROLE revoked and is temporarily retained as a kUSD-to-USDC redeem reserve while its USDC reserve migrates, with the Proof of Reserves summing all three PSM reserves through the window. KerneVault v2 was deployed in the 2026-06-16 ceremony; the earlier KUSDPSM (0xFf3025ec...) remains a redeem reserve, and the prior KerneVault (0x8005bc7A...) is retired. The original KERNE deployment (0xfEA3D217...) was retired and superseded by the canonical v2 above; see kerne.fi/security for the disclosure. The skUSD above (0x96F5102C...) is the 2026-07-03 redeploy that reset a distorted share price back to par; the prior skUSD (0xdEd74F7E...) is retired and holds only residual dust.

A single command checks every public claim Kerne makes about its own state, against live RPCs and live HTTPS endpoints, with no authentication:

curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kerne-protocol/contracts-public/main/scripts/verify_public_endpoints.sh | bash

Prefer not to pipe the internet to bash? Read the script first, or follow the full hostile-reader walkthrough (every claim cross-checked with cast call) in contracts-public/HOW_TO_VERIFY_KERNE.md.

• Internal: an extensive Foundry test suite (900+ Solidity tests) plus Python (bot) and TypeScript (SDK) suites, and a drift-guard CI job that asserts every numeric threshold cited in the docs matches the live constant in code.
• External: Kerne has engaged Hexens for its first external smart-contract audit (scope: kUSD, skUSD, KUSDPSM, KerneVault); fieldwork has been underway since 2026-07-13 and no report has been published yet. The public bug bounty is live at kerne.fi/security, and internal adversarial audit reports are published at kerne.fi/security/audits. External reports land in contracts-public/audits/ as they arrive.
• Verification: every registry contract is source-verified on BaseScan and/or Sourcify except KerneStaking and KerneFlashArbBot, which are disclosed per-contract in the contracts-public status table. The live skUSD (0x96F5102C, 2026-07-03 redeploy) is source-verified on BaseScan (2026-07-10) and Sourcify. The live KUSDPSM (0xaBDE1138, 2026-07-10 redeploy) is Sourcify-verified with an exact creation and runtime match; BaseScan native verification is pending. KerneVault v2 (2026-06-16 ceremony) was source-verified on BaseScan and Sourcify 2026-06-17. A full forge-testable source mirror lands in contracts-public at the next mirror refresh, when source and deployed bytecode are realigned.

• X / Twitter: @KerneProtocol
• Discord: discord.gg/Xx8TSuWrCA
• Security disclosure: kerne.systems@protonmail.com (PGP key in security.txt)