5 years ago we were all farming platform's native tokens at 4-digit APYs. Today, home loans and car payments are quietly becoming some of the best yields in crypto (not 4-digit APYs, but backed by something real). @mezzanine_fi is building a way to leverage that yield (coming from home loans and car payments) without you having to manage the position yourself. The strategy behind it is called the carry trade, looping is how you leverage it, and @RWA_xyz 's report says it's one of the biggest reasons people are buying tokenized RWAs right now. @HastraFi 's tokens, $PRIME and $AUTO , fit perfectly. PRIME earns interest from real US home equity loans and AUTO from US car loans, and you can borrow against them for less than they pay you. According to Mezzanine, AUTO paid ~9.4% over the last 30 days while borrowing against it cost around 6.2%. Needless to say, but I'll say it anyway, the difference between 6.2% and 9.4% is what you earn, and what you ideally want to leverage or precisely, loop. Looping is great, but it sucks if you have to do it the Hand Solo way (manually). Aside from numerous clicks, you have to take into consideration that borrowing costs change, positions need adjusting, and that your profit can turn into a loss if you stop monitoring your position(s). Fear not, because @phtevenstrong has that rizz and he's been working on Mezz. Mezzanine's first vault, the Hastra Optimizer, handles all of it (the Hand Solo work and headaches you want to avoid): it loops both tokens (PRIME and AUTO) for you from a single deposit of USDC or wYLDS. In other words, as a user, all you have to do is deposit and select your risk tier, precisely, your desired tranche (tailored to your risk appetite); the Junior tranche earns more but takes (potential) losses first, while Senior earns less and is protected by Junior. This is a very intelligent move by the Mezz crew, and I'm not even surprised because I know that Stephen's second language is DeFi. Or Spanish. Regardlessado, está muy bien. So, why is this a very intelligent move by Mezzanine, and why do I dare to say that it's also a big thing for this DeFiamond in the making? It's easy: they're launching with one of the most-in-demand trades in RWAs, on assets that already hold over $600M, and they're making it usable for people who don't want to treat a spreadsheet like if it's a tamagotchi. However, it's not free monies. If borrowing costs jump, the difference (the one you want to leverage) shrinks, and if borrowing ends up costing more than the token pays, profits turn into red numbers. To be spot on, Mezzanine manages borrowing costs for you, but if they (the costs) rise everywhere at once, loopers will feel it. The risk of rising borrowing costs is realistic, but usually short-lived. Car loans come with real default risk (a borrower stops paying and the lender repossesses the car and sells it), which is part of why AUTO pays more. Btw, exits take a bit of patience, since the vault unwinds positions weekly to protect everyone still in it. TL;DR on the tokens involved in the Hastra Optimizer: wYLDS is Hastra's wrapped version of YLDS, an SEC-registered stablecoin (current supply: $490M) from Figure (a Nasdaq-listed US lender that is behind HELOC, a top 10 token on CoinGecko that looks like a stablecoin but is actually a tokenized loan asset; HELOC stands for Home Equity Line of Credit). It's backed by US gov bonds and pays around 3.6% annually. This one you stake to get PRIME or AUTO. PRIME funds Figure's home equity loans, which are loans to homeowners backed by their houses. It's the steadier one, and it pays around 6% to 7% APY. AUTO funds car loans for people with less-than-perfect credit (99.5% of CT, myself included), backed by the car themselves. It pays more, roughly 10 to 12% APY, with more risk to match. Ok, it's time to zoom out. RWAs are pulling in real money, the carry trade is driving a big chunk of it, and pretty much nobody wants to run that trade by hand. Mezzanine sits right in the middle (pun intended) of this all three (RWAs, carry trade, and time-poor users), with a stacked security setup, a founder who's been doing yield math for CT (and YT) for years, and a framework built to tranche whatever comes next. Hastra is the first floor. I'm watching this building go up, and I'd suggest you do the same. I'll be back with more content as Mezzanine grows. 🫡