Katana

Katana operates as a yield generation protocol developed on the Solana blockchain, designed to simplify access to complex decentralized finance (DeFi) strategies. The company was founded in 2021 by Ayush Menon, who serves as CEO, and Eric Nie, who is the founding engineer. Their journey began in October 2021 when they built the initial protocol in just six days for the Solana Ignition Hackathon, where they won the Grand Prize. This early success propelled them to take the project full-time, launching on Solana's mainnet in December 2021.

The core business of Katana is to provide users with a suite of automated yield strategies, enabling them to passively earn returns on their crypto assets without needing to actively manage them. The platform offers various vaults for strategies such as covered call and put options, which automatically roll over. This model targets any crypto asset holder looking to generate sustainable, risk-adjusted yields that were previously accessible only to those with deep technical knowledge. The protocol sources its own liquidity through partnerships with major crypto options market makers.

In November 2021, Katana secured $5 million in a seed funding round led by Framework Ventures, with participation from prominent investors including Founder's Fund, Coinbase Ventures, and Solana Ventures. The capital was allocated to scale the core team and further develop its product suite. By April 2023, Katana was acquired by PsyFi, another entity in the DeFi space.

Keywords: yield generation, DeFi protocol, Solana blockchain, automated yield strategies, crypto asset management, passive income crypto, covered call vaults, put option vaults, Solana Ignition Hackathon, Ayush Menon, Framework Ventures, PsyFi, structured products crypto, digital asset yield