DeFi Gold Mining Guide: 5 Potential Projects to Watch

Author: Rightsideonly

Compiled by: AIdidiaoJP, Foresight News

Note: This article is solely for project observation and information organization. Many of the projects mentioned are in early stages and carry high uncertainty. Readers are advised to make independent judgments and be aware of risks.

This week, I discussed projects that I focused on and learned about during the conference. Some of these are still in anonymous development and are awaiting team updates. The following five are projects I am actively tracking: Mezzanine, INFINIT, IRIS, RISEx, and Boros. To be clear, I have no vested interests; I just think Boros is really cool.

Mezzanine: Breaking Down Single Assets or Yield Strategies into Multiple Tiers

Mezzanine builds structured vaults around single assets or single yield strategies and then breaks the vaults into different tiers.

Subordinate assets bear losses first and take a larger share of the profits; priority is given after the buffer, resulting in lower yields. An optional mezzanine tranche can be set up in between, with a longer withdrawal period.

Each vault also has a non-interest-bearing base token, which occupies the super-priority position and ultimately bears the losses. Deposits are first converted into this base token before entering a specific tier, a step that is automatically completed by the app.

Mezzanine has not yet launched, but the first vault has been fully documented, and the strategies have been running elsewhere: Hastra Optimizer Vault. Users deposit USDC or wYLDS on Ethereum, and the strategy converts the funds into Hastra PRIME and AUTO, then cycles through Morpho and Kamino; Aave, Exponent, and Pendle are listed as potential venues.

The reserve is $50,000, funded by the asset manager, with one month of vault earnings held in a custodial account. In terms of security, the project has been audited by Sherlock and ChainSecurity, and formally verified by Certora; partners listed on the official website include Pendle, Kamino, Upshift, and RedStone.

The profit-sharing ratio between priority and subordinate levels has not yet been disclosed. The documentation states that when the vault page opens, it will display the base rewards and risk premium ratios; I will keep an eye on subsequent updates.

INFINIT: Managed Trading Vaults with an Annualized Return of About 32%

INFINIT operates managed trading vaults, executing trades on Hyperliquid. External strategy managers are responsible for operations and must invest their own funds as first loss. The first vault is APEX Quants' APEX MultiStrategy, which began trading on July 30 and is currently performing as expected.

This vault is based on a deposit of $506,100 USDC, with a 7.18% increase over 82 days; as of October 20, the annualized rate according to the app is 31.94% APR.

The vault trades long and short on Hyperliquid, covering crypto assets, stocks, commodities, and indices, using market conditions to determine when to trade; if no assets meet the scoring threshold, it remains in cash.

Backtesting shows an annualized return of 163% over an 84-day window, with a maximum drawdown of 10.5%. The real-world performance of 31.94% is below the manager's own conservative estimate of 40% to 90%, but it is significantly higher than most DeFi mining yields, making the next vault worth looking forward to.

The IN token will distribute part of the execution fees to stakers, used to unlock app features and comes with governance voting rights. Vault 1 will be redeemed on October 28, and the deposit window for Vault 2 is planned from October 28 to November 11. As of this writing, Vault 1 has 8 trading days left, and the strategy has been validated in real-world trading.

IRIS: Overlaying Fixed-Rate, Fixed-Term Loans on Existing Lending Markets

IRIS overlays fixed-rate, fixed-term loans on existing lending markets. It does not create a separate interest rate market but operates on top of Morpho Blue and Aave V3, thus not needing to start liquidity from scratch.

The mechanism works roughly as follows: market makers (solvers) sign off-chain quotes, and once accepted by borrowers, the loan interest rate is locked until maturity, while the underlying venues still receive floating rates. Solvers pay a margin to cover the gap between fixed and floating rates, earning the interest spread plus collateral returns, minus protocol fees.

Each loan is packed into a one-time "pod" (isolation chamber), where collateral and debt are isolated and not mixed with other loans; positions can be refinanced between whitelisted platforms.

IRIS currently does not disclose TVL, loan volume, or token issuance. There is still much to be done, but if successful, it could open a new path for fixed-term loans without creating new liquidity pools.

RISEx: A Fully On-Chain Order Book Perpetual Contract DEX

RISEx is a perpetual contract DEX with a fully on-chain order book running within the RISE EVM. RISE operates on Optimistic Rollup L2. There is no off-chain matching engine here; orders, matching, and settlements are all on-chain states, and other contracts can read and trade based on the same transaction.

Currently tracking 43 perpetual markets, with approximately $39 million in open contracts, it is still considered a new project. Major coins have up to 25x leverage, using USDC as collateral.

RISE has raised $8 million, including $4 million from Galaxy Ventures in June 2025; seed round investors include Vitalik Buterin and Stani Kulechov.

RISEx does not have a token yet. RISE chain and RISEx claim to be "one team, one vision, one token." The mainnet is still restricted, requiring an invitation or waitlist recommendation to access.

Boros: Creating Markets for Various Interest Rates, Starting with Perpetual Funding Rates

Boros addresses market inefficiencies by creating markets for various interest rates. Currently, the focus is on perpetual funding rates: users can leverage to go long or short on Yield Units, converting floating funding rates into fixed implied APR.

On October 15, Boros launched a spread market: ETH and BTC, with the underlying being the Hyperliquid funding rate minus the Gate funding rate. A position tracks the interest rate spread between the two venues; at launch, the short quotes were around 25% to 35% fixed APR.

How do both sides make money? By shorting the spread while hedging with perpetual contracts in both venues, achieving delta neutrality and earning a fixed implied APR of about 25% to 35%. Going long on the spread means collecting the actual interest spread at each settlement, as long as the actual spread remains higher than the fixed rate you pay.

Arbitrageurs continuously short will push the fixed rate down; long traders will buy at a discount. The actions of both sides create advantages for each other, leading to increasing trading volumes.

Users can also execute fixed-rate trades through the CrossEx terminal. This is a free, open-source application running on their own machines. It scans all Boros markets, compares them with Gate CrossEx perpetual contracts, and calculates net annualized returns after deducting fees and slippage; after selecting a market, it locks in Boros's fixed-rate side first, then hedges the perpetual contract side at the correct order. The interface displays the locked fixed APR, margin, whether it remains delta neutral, and the expected return at maturity.

This sounds like a trading desk strategy, but it is not just trading desks that are doing this. User @gabavineb posted that after 25 days of going long on the spread, a position of 9.19 ETH earned 1.96 ETH, about 21%, and also wrote down the steps taken.

If you want to understand before putting funds in, Boros Academy explains the mechanisms and common strategies: interest rate speculation, hedging one's own funding costs, and delta-neutral arbitrage. Spending an afternoon watching Academy and trying with a small position is enough to understand.