Private beta · Risk market infrastructure
Shelter is ready-to-go infrastructure for products that trade risk. Creators launch insurance, options or credit swaps without building anything. Underwriters earn yield, leave the moment they want, and keep their capital usable as collateral. Hedgers get protection whenever they need it.
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The core market: hedgers buy protection, underwriters back it with capital. Open to both at any hour.
Hedgers pay a premium to be protected against a specific event. Underwriters supply capital and earn that premium for carrying the risk. A payoff module decides what happens if the event occurs.
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Nothing goes wrong. The hedger paid for peace of mind, and underwriters earned the premium for being there. Risk changes hands. It does not disappear.
What hedgers can buy is a core part of the value. Depeg, queued liquidity, impermanent loss in AMMs, options, credit default swaps and RWA insurance are all payoff modules on the same infrastructure. Pick one to see how it pays.
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Depeg cover pays the gap between the coin's price and its peg. At 0.75 it pays a quarter of the cover, at 0.50 half, and in full if the coin goes to zero. Every protection is a payoff module: pick another and the shape changes, not the infrastructure.
Underwriters, the liquidity providers, are expected to deposit in a curated vault rather than directly in a market. The vault sits on top of the core markets and underwrites the ones its curator selects. Depositors get share tokens back, and those tokens work as collateral in third-party integrations such as money markets: post them, borrow against them, and the vault keeps underwriting the whole time.
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Underwriters deposit in a curated Vault instead of a market. It puts their capital to work in the markets its curator selects and collects the premium.
Take a depeg market for wstETH, underwritten with ETH. Two cases bound what a share token can be worth. If nobody exercises, the vault keeps its ETH and the value stays the same. In the worst case, hedgers swap all their wstETH for the ETH covering them, and the vault is left holding the full reference asset.
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Peg holds: nobody swaps, so the vault keeps its ETH and keeps earning premium. A share token is backed by that ETH, so its value stays the same as the ETH, and a money market can accept it as collateral.
When an underwriter wants out, they are out. Fast exit is immediate: no queue, no notice period, no waiting for cover to end. The market takes over the open exposure at its going price and the underwriter is paid in that same moment.
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Exit immediately: the market takes over your open exposure at its going price, so you are paid in the same moment, with no queue and no notice. Or wait in line and be paid in order, with no exit price. The more of your capital is in use, the longer waiting takes and the more leaving now costs.
The premium for cover does not come from an oracle or a predetermined pricing module. The market finds it on its own: more demand for cover pushes it up, more capital underwriting pushes it down.
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Demand surges, so the price rises. Capital arrives, so it eases. No oracle, formula or committee is involved: the price is discovered inside the market.
Maturities are never forced. Each hedger decides the day their own cover ends, with no calendar of fixed dates to fit into. If a market creator wants fixed, discrete maturities for a product, that is their call alone. And even then, nothing has to be rolled over.
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Elsewhere, cover has to end on one of a few fixed dates. Hedgers pay for days they don't need, and the capital behind the cover has to roll over at every date.
Hedgers do not wait for a counterparty. Capital is already in the market, so protection is available at the going price at any hour, with no peer-to-peer matching.
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No peer-to-peer matching. Capital is already in the market, so a hedger buys cover at the going price whenever they like, in any size the market can back.
A market is already very flexible. Hooks let you customise it further without touching the market itself. KYC gates and fixed maturities are just two examples of a multitude: a hook can add any rule a product needs, and you can combine as many as you like.
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A hook adds a rule without touching the market itself. KYC gates and fixed maturities are only two examples; these six are a few more. Anything a product needs can be a hook, and you can combine as many as you like.
Creators are anyone building financial products that trade risk. Shelter is the ready-to-go, highly customisable infrastructure underneath. You choose the parts and deploy through a factory: no code to write, no development cost, and launching is free. And when your use case is special, we provide custom development and consultancy to build it with you.
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You choose the assets: the exposure to protect and the capital that backs it. Nothing to build.
Passive liquidity providers deposit in a curated vault and earn yield from the risk it underwrites, while their liquidity stays usable and unlocked through the vault's synthetic asset.
Hedgers find a wide variety of protections in one place, and buy them whenever they need, for exactly as long as they need.
The premium a market discovers is readable on chain, which makes Shelter a primitive other protocols can compose with. AMMs did the same for prices, and became feeds that others build on.
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The way AMMs became price feeds, a risk market becomes a risk feed. The premium it discovers is readable on chain, so other protocols can build on it.
Wherever there is risk that someone wants to hand off and someone else is willing to carry, there is a market to build. These are the segments we are designing for.
Depeg cover for the coins they issue or hold.
Cover for impermanent loss, so providing liquidity is easier to size.
Cover for what they lend against, and vault share tokens as collateral.
Protection for funds waiting in withdrawal queues.
RWA insurance, with KYC-gated markets where a product needs them.
Credit default swaps, and structured products built on the same markets.
Option payoffs launched without building a venue.
Hedge an exposure, or earn a premium on capital that would sit idle.
Intended segments only. No partners, customers or integrations are implied.
Creators launch without building. Underwriters earn without locking their capital. Hedgers get protection whenever they need it. Shelter is the infrastructure underneath.