Partners

Nerona's philosophy is to own the parts of the stack where ownership creates real differentiation — the stablecoin, the risk separation model, and the client experience — and to plug in best-in-class partners for the rest. The partners below are not logo-wall decoration. Each handles a specific, load-bearing function.

M0 Protocol — USDnr backing

What they do for us: T-Bill custody, issuance of wM (wrapped M), and peg liquidity.

USDnr is backed 1:1 by wM, M0's onchain representation of short-duration U.S. Treasury Bills. M0 handles the T-Bill custody leg, the attestation infrastructure, and the onchain minting primitive. They also anchor the wM/USDC liquidity on Ethereum mainnet, which is what makes USDnr → USDC redemption work at tight spreads.

We chose M0 because the T-Bill backing is transparent, programmatic, and non-rehypothecated. We don't want to be a T-Bill custodian. M0 already is.

Upshift — sUSDnr vault infrastructure and Risk Manager

What they do for us: ERC-4626 vault architecture for sUSDnr, strategy whitelisting, and policy enforcement.

Upshift provides the vault that issues sUSDnr and the policy layer that constrains what the vault can do. In the Nerona architecture, Upshift acts as the Risk Manager: they whitelist the DeFi protocols the vault can deploy to, set guardrails on strategy behavior, and control admin selection for the Fordefi MPC signing setup. Nerona operates the vault as the Operator — executing strategies within Upshift's whitelist.

We chose Upshift because their architecture is one of the few in the market that actually enforces separation of duties at the smart-contract level, rather than as an operational procedure. See Risk Management for the full breakdown.

Fluent — native chain for USDnr and sUSDnr

What they do for us: The home execution environment for the Nerona stack.

Nerona's stablecoin stack is native to Fluent mainnet. USDnr, sUSDnr, and the Upshift vault are all deployed on Fluent. Strategies are bridged out to other EVM chains for execution and capital is returned to Fluent for accounting and user-facing operations.

We also operate on Ethereum mainnet for the USDnr/wM/USDC liquidity corridor and for composability with the broader DeFi ecosystem.

Fordefi — MPC signing layer

What they do for us: Cryptographic signing infrastructure for vault operations.

Fordefi provides the MPC (multi-party computation) signing setup that authorizes onchain movement of vault capital. Critically, admin selection for the MPC setup is controlled by Upshift, not Nerona — which is what makes the separation of duties real rather than cosmetic. Neither Nerona nor Upshift can produce a valid signature unilaterally.

Underlying DeFi protocols

sUSDnr yield is generated by deploying capital into a whitelisted set of established DeFi protocols, including (but not limited to):

  • Aave — money markets
  • Morpho — isolated lending markets
  • Euler — lending
  • Pendle — fixed-yield and tokenized-yield markets

The active whitelist evolves as Upshift's risk review admits or removes protocols. Current positions are visible onchain.