After April's $606 Million in DeFi Hacks, What's the Fair Value Yield Rate?

Unchained

Laura Shin

Tech News, Business News, News

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 3 May 2026

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

$606 million in DeFi exploits in one month. Two of the space's sharpest risk thinkers debate whether lenders are being paid anywhere close to enough. ======================================================== Thank you to our sponsors! Coinbase One 20% off first year of annual plan + $50 Bitcoin bonus. Offer valid until May 31. coinbase.com/unchained Citrea Bitcoin changed how money works. Satya changes how Bitcoin scales. citrea.xyz/unchained ======================================================== One month, $606 million in exploits. And yet DeFi lending yields for blue-chip collateral sit close to SOFR, as if nothing happened. Tom Dunleavy, head of venture at Varys Capital, did the math and concluded that fair risk-adjusted DeFi yields should sit around 12.5%. Adrian Cachinero Vasiljevic, co-founder of Steakhouse Financial, thinks that number paints with too broad a brush, and that for the right primitives, with the right collateral, the market rate might actually be close to correct. Host Laura Shin queries them on the TradFi equations that underpin the debate, the DeFi-specific risks that those equations miss, and on whether depositors are sleepwalking into tail risk they cannot fully see. Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Laura Shin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, Host / Unchained Guests: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Tom Dunleavy, Head of Venture, Varys Capital — @dunleavy89 Adrian Cachinero Vasiljevic, Co-Founder, Steakhouse Financial — @adcv_ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, everyone. Welcome to Unchained. You're a no-hype resource for all things crypto. I'm your host,
0:05.3	Laura Shin. Thanks for joining this live stream. Before we get started, a quick reminder. Nothing you hear on Unchained
0:10.5	as investment advice. This show is for informational and entertainment purposes only, and my guest and I may hold assets discussed in the show.
0:17.0	For more disclosures, visit UnchangedCrypto.com. Bitcoin changed how money works.
0:21.9	Citraea changes how Bitcoin scales.
0:24.0	With a trust-minimized BTC and a native staple coin, CTUSD, you can finally access Bitcoin
0:30.0	capital markets with lending, privacy, Bitcoin yield, and more.
0:33.8	Put your BTC to work at Citrea.xyZ slash unchained. Etherfi is giving
0:40.1	unchained listeners 15% cash back on food and ride apps, and that's on top of the 3%
0:45.4	you get on everything else. Your bank is charging you to use your own money. I switched.
0:50.0	Go to ether.fi slash unchained to claim your discount.
0:55.7	Today's topic is how defy rates can properly compensate for risk.
1:00.2	Here to discuss are Tom Dunlevy, head of venture at Varys Capital,
1:04.5	and Adrian Caterno Vasiliovic, co-founder at Steakhouse Financial.
1:09.0	Welcome, Tom and Adrian.
1:11.7	Thanks for having me. I us. Hey, Laura.
1:16.1	So this month is probably going to go down in crypto history for DPI hacks. And when I say that,
1:22.5	I'm also hoping that that's the case because I'm hoping that this is the peak and not just
1:27.3	like an appetizer. So I'm just going to list. I just did a quick search to figure out what are all the hacks that have occurred in this month. So obviously drift and kelpdow. There's also Ria Finance, Wasabi, Sweat Foundation, PulseFault. By the way, some of these were like literally in the last 24 hours.
1:44.8	Crestow, aftermath, singularity, finance, hyperbridge, Notify, Eroswob, Cowswap, PURLend, Giddy, Syndicate Commons Bridge, Lendhub, Zeta chain, Jewdow, Scallup, Volo, Kwanch, Kipselli, juice box now getting in the really small ones, juice box V3, and Theta Nuts.
2:03.3	So you guys, that's a total of $606 million in exploits.
2:09.8	Obviously, so we're mainly going to be talking about defy lending.
	...

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