We contributed to Lido DAO, P2P.org, =nil; Foundation, DRPC, Neutron and invested into 150+ projects
We are excited to share our thesis on Makina, a pioneering DeFi execution engine that brings institutional-grade asset management onchain. cyber•Fund has invested in their strategic round to support their journey towards building the Cybereconomy’s financial infrastructure
In a world of declining interest rates, DeFi offers compelling yield opportunities, but they remain largely inaccessible to professional managers, retail, and DAOs. Professionals can't deploy capital safely due to fragmented infrastructure, weak risk controls, and manual execution across dozens of protocols. As DeFi protocols and high-frequency traders have increased in their complexity, retail investors have found themselves unable to access sophisticated strategies at all. Makina solves this by providing an institutional-grade execution engine that enables professional asset managers to deploy cross-chain strategies with built-in risk management, while giving retail users and DAOs frictionless access to professionally managed yields.
The past few years investors have been able to get 5% risk-free yield in T-Bills. The incentive to move out on the risk curve and into DeFi wasn’t clear. With the federal funds rate, currently at 3.75% and set to trend lower, this will change. With this change in macroeconomic conditions, so too, will come massive amounts of capital in search for higher returns.
Crypto, and DeFi in particular, is the perfect venue for capital seeking to earn a higher risk-adjusted yield. There is an asymmetric opportunity here to extract significantly higher yields – and hence fees for managers – as the DeFi market, though maturing, is still much more inefficient than TradFi markets where hundreds of billions chase after ever more diminishing alpha. Asset managers will follow this stream of capital to satisfy the surging demand for yield by supplying strategies.
With regulatory clarity now finally on the horizon and the trajectory of lower yields the timing couldn’t be better. DeFi is currently one of the main use cases of crypto that have found PMF and is set to further profit from these megatrends pushing towards broader adoption. However, especially when it comes to asset management – a core discipline in finance – the current market offering and infrastructure is still unsatisfying for different actors:
Professional asset managers: asset managers have started to look at crypto. However, they have refrained from deploying to DeFi directly, as infrastructure and risk management practices remain limited. The distinct differences from traditional financial market infrastructure represent a big adoption hurdle. Billions in potential capital remain untapped and offchain, because professionals can't operate safely and in compliance with mandates of investors.
Retail investors: complex yield strategies currently remain inaccessible to the average DeFi user. It’s easy to earn 3% yield on USDC on Aave, however, accessing the 10-20% yields that private hedge funds regularly achieve, have persistently remained out of reach for smaller investors. Many don’t have the accredited investors status required to invest in such funds, nor do they have the specialized knowledge and operational capacity to execute these complex strategies themselves.
Makina changes this by providing the first execution engine purpose-built for sophisticated, cross-chain strategies with institutional-grade risk controls.
Makina's architecture introduces Machines (strategy vaults) and Calibers (cross-chain execution engines) that work together through a hub-and-spoke design. Professional managers, called “Operators”, and AI agents can deploy single-sided, liquid investment strategies across EVM chains, protocols, and DeFi pools – all with strict exposure limits and governance-defined risk controls baked in at the protocol level.
The core piece is MakinaVM, a flexible execution environment that enables atomic execution, and allows strategies to interact with any external protocol without requiring custom smart contract adapters for each integration. This eliminates the fragmentation plaguing today's DeFi operations: with Makina, every new protocol integration no longer requires new code, new audits, nor does it introduce new attack vectors. Operators can compose sophisticated cross-chain strategies, from delta-neutral hedging to cross-chain arbitrage or liquid venture, with the confidence that risk parameters are enforced at the smart contract level.
Coupled with its avant-garde technical architecture, Makina has rebuilt the risk management framework from the ground up. Rather than a centralized model, where strategists are forced to constantly move out on the risk curve in a narrow set of available strategies and assets to achieve returns that allocators expect, exposing users to increased concentration and black swan risks, Makina takes an opinionated Operator/Risk Manager approach. Each Machine has a duality of roles, which separates the responsibility of execution under the Operator, and the maintenance of accepted assets and protocols by a dedicated Risk Manager. This dichotomy of authority allows Machines to achieve higher returns, while managing risk methodically in a more granular and precise manner.
Revenue flows from day one through a clear fee model: management and performance fees are split between Operators and the protocol, funding buybacks, liquidity incentives, and distributions to token holders. A thoughtful token model ensures the value generated on Makina’s infrastructure accrues to the $MAK token.
Dialectic is the first Operator to launch on Makina: they deployed battle-tested yielding strategies (DUSD, DETH, DBIT) that have multi-year track records and have proven resilient even in adverse market conditions. Fees are enabled on these strategies, and the protocol is already generating revenue.
After going live in September Makina hit $94M TVL in its first week with deposit caps filling in just two days. After this initial traction Makina is gearing up for the next step: a fair token launch that is truly fair.
Makina will be doing a token sale on Legion on November 25th, 2025. The token sale will be composed of a priority ICO and a public ICO.
The priority ICO will distribute $MAK tokens to participants of the pre-launch phase, at a $35M valuation, the same valuation as the strategic round that cyber•Fund and other angels invested in. This fair launch approach prioritizes community alignment over insider extraction, with high float and low FDV designed to build a strong, engaged community from day one.
The public ICO is designed to offer an opportunity to everyone else to build exposure to $MAK. Legion will allow Makina to select participants based on specific criterias, in order to ensure distribution of $MAK tokens to aligned individuals.
We are strong believers in the ethos of Makina’s approach: offering its community of early supporters the same valuation as strategic investors, prioritizing organic yields over token incentives, and focusing on product-market fit instead of aggressive fundraising before establishing value.
Makina is led by Jenna Zenk, a seasoned builder and one of the pioneers of onchain asset management. As the former CTO of Melon Protocol (now Enzyme), one of the earliest DeFi protocols, she brings deep technical and operational expertise. Jenna also has hands-on experience managing private crypto capital, having launched her own fund in the Middle East.
Makina was designed to meet the evolving needs of modern asset managers, drawing on years of experience and insights from its strategic design partner, Dialectic. Ryan Zurrer and the Dialectic team contribute a strong network, crypto-native expertise, and deep operational knowledge in DeFi asset management, ensuring that Makina is built by practitioners, for practitioners.
Makina is a core building block in how capital can be managed onchain, a critical piece for building towards the Cybereconomy. Makina is positioned to become the infrastructure layer connecting institutional capital and retail users to the yield DeFi enables. By combining proven strategies, institutional-grade execution, and crypto-native principles, Makina has a great shot at building the rails that will bring professional asset management – and the trillions of dollars it manages – into DeFi.