Jul 3, 2026
Sierra Protocol began by issuing SIERRA, its flagship Liquid Yield Token (LYT). The protocol is now evolving into an issuance platform for permissionless yield. Asset managers, RWA originators, fintechs, and exchanges will use Sierra to launch permissionless vaults and LYTs with the exact risk, liquidity, and yield profile their product needs, backed by any combination of RWAs and onchain yield sources.
What Sierra Protocol Can Do
Sierra serves many cases, each built on the same underlying institutional-grade stack, including:
Deploying a Permissionless Vault - Partners bring the product vision and Sierra provides the smart contracts, legal structure, custody, and access to unique RWAs
Accessing Premium Curated Vaults - Depositors allocate directly into vaults managed by a dedicated team of regulated investment professionals overseeing over $6B for institutional investors
Issuing a Liquid Yield Token - Partners extend the permissionless vault offering into a full LYT, making it permissionless and composable across DeFi and CeFi
Powering an Earn Product - Fintech providers, from self-custodial wallets to neobanks, use Sierra vaults and LYTs as the engine behind their own Earn offerings
Any Reserve Asset, Public or Private
Each Sierra Vault or LYT is backed by a configurable portfolio of OpenTrade vaults, combining RWA and DeFi yield sources into a single reserve strategy. The current menu of yield sources spans every type of fixed income or credit RWA, including money market funds, AAA-rated CLOs, commercial paper, active bond funds, asset-backed financing, trade receivables, private credit, and hedge funds. We also have access to any available DeFi protocol and curated vaults with OpenTrade's Prime+ Flexible, Managed DeFi, and Stablecoin Staking products.
We are in the process of launching several new LYTs, including investment-grade EUROC-denominated and higher yielding USDC-denominated products. We are also currently in product development with several partner issuers to launch permissionless vaults and LYTs with customized risk, liquidity, and yield profiles based on their objectives and product goals.
One Protocol, Every Layer of the Stack
Going from an offchain yield source to a full-scale, permissionless onchain offering requires infrastructure spanning every layer of the stack. Sierra was built to span all five layers of the permissionless yield stack:
Asset Origination: Sourcing any public or private fixed income and credit asset, not just what already exists onchain
Institutional-Grade Operations: Structuring, custody, administration, verification, reporting, onboarding, and compliance
Onchain Deployment and Tokenization: Permissionless deployment, security, and controls
Curation and Allocation: Customizing a reserve strategy to target your specific target liquidity, risk, and yield profile
Distribution and Composability: Enabling secondary market liquidity, transferability, and integrations across DeFi and CeFi
Composed of the Industry's Best
Sierra composes the best institutional providers in the world into a single, auditable Stack, and every issuing partner inherits that infrastructure by default:
OpenTrade powers yield and reserves through an institutional-grade platform with a bankruptcy-remote structure, connecting over $200M of stablecoins to RWA and DeFi yield sources
Five Sigma leads asset management as an FCA-regulated manager that has supported over $500B in private credit transactions, curating and underwriting every RWA in the Stack
JPMorgan and Wilmington Trust hold RWA reserves in direct custody at Tier-1 Global Systemically Important Banks (GSIBs)
Station70 provides disaster recovery through a multi-layered, cryptography-based system for cryptoasset recoverability
Hypernative monitors smart contracts and DeFi protocols around the clock, covering hundreds of threat types
Chainalysis runs continuous transaction and address screening to maintain compliance and flag illicit activity
LayerZero secures cross-chain messaging, the largest network of its kind, securing over $75B in assets and more than $200B in transaction volume
Fireblocks provides MPC custody through the largest wallet solution in the industry, trusted by over 2,400 enterprises with over $10T transacted
Redstone powers the onchain oracle, securing over $5B in total value across more than 150 projects
What's Next
Sierra's Stack is designed to keep expanding, both in the reserve assets it can access and in the partners building on top of it. If you're an asset manager, RWA originator, fintech, exchange, or any potential partner exploring how a permissionless vault or LYT could fit your product, we want to hear from you!