Belay, explained.
Fixed-term, fixed-cost, no-liquidation USDG against tokenised stocks and Uniswap v4 LP positions on Robinhood Chain. A small immutable engine, explicit accounting, and native Uniswap v4 plumbing around it.
Overview
In climbing, a belay holds you if you slip. Here, a deal is one bag of collateral, one cap and one date. A borrower pledges a stock token or an LP position and receives USDG. The cost is fixed at the start and never grows. Until the date, nothing can move the collateral except the cap being paid. On the date the outcome is already decided: either the cap was paid and the collateral went back, or it was not and the lenders take it.
There is no oracle, no margin call, no liquidation and no admin path to funds. The engine has no owner. The only owned contract is the registry, which decides what can be listed in future, never what happens to a deal that already exists.
On top of that engine, Belay adds three things. A router that repays a deal with the collateral itself, using a Uniswap v4 flash loan. Support for Uniswap v4 LP positions as collateral. And a v4 hook that turns swap fees into yield for the Earn vault.
How a deal works
| Step | What happens | Example |
|---|---|---|
| 1 · List | Borrower escrows collateral with an ask, a cap, a term and a funding window. | 12.5 NVDA · ask 1,814.88 · cap 1,824.00 · 7d |
| 2 · Fill | Lenders fund any amount of at least 10% of the ask (or the remainder). Up to 10 lenders. Anyone can pull out before it fills. | 907.44 + 453.72 + 453.72 |
| 3 · Activate | At 100%, the origination fee goes to the fee sink, the rest is credited to the borrower, and expiry = now + term. | borrower credited 1,796.73 |
| 4a · Reclaim | Before expiry the reclaim holder pays the cap. It is split pro rata to lenders and the collateral returns. | pay 1,824.00, NVDA back |
| 4b · Claim | At or after expiry anyone can trigger the claim. The collateral is split pro rata to lenders. | lenders receive 12.5 NVDA |
Deadlines are exclusive: a deal is repayable while now < expiry and claimable once now ≥ expiry. There is no grace period. If a listing does not fill inside its window, anyone can call lapse, which refunds every pledge and returns the collateral. The borrower can cancel at any time before activation with the same effect.
Borrowing
Choose a token on the registry, an amount, the USDG you want (the ask), what you will pay to get the collateral back (the cap), a term (7, 14 or 30 days) and a funding window (up to 72 hours). The cap may not exceed the ask by more than the registry maximum. Suggested caps are up to 85% of value for large-cap stocks and ETFs.
Once active, USDG sits in your engine balance; withdraw it from Portfolio. Before expiry you can pay the cap, cash out through the router, top up collateral, transfer the reclaim right, or list it for sale. After expiry the collateral belongs to the lenders as soon as anyone calls claim.
Flash cash-out
You do not need USDG to close a deal. BelayRouter borrows the cap from the Uniswap v4 PoolManager inside one unlock, pays it to the engine, receives your collateral, sells it in its deepest USDG pool (v4 or v3), repays the PoolManager and sends you the surplus. If the surplus would be below the minimum you set, the whole transaction reverts and nothing changes.
To use it, approve the router once as an operator with setOperator(router, true). An operator can only reclaim on your behalf, which pays the cap to lenders and returns the collateral into the same transaction. The router takes 0.5% of the surplus, never of the cap.
LP positions as collateral
A Uniswap v4 liquidity position is an NFT. Belay can hold it as collateral, so an LP can borrow USDG without pulling liquidity. The position stays in its pool and keeps earning trading fees while escrowed; they are collected by whoever gets the NFT back.
Rules: the pool must be approved on the registry, the position must hold at least the pool's minimum liquidity, it must not be subscribed to an incentive program, and each pool has a cap on open position deals. A position deal has a single lender who funds the whole ask. If the cap is paid, the NFT goes back to the reclaim holder. If not, the lender calls claim and then withdrawPosition to receive the NFT.
Standing offers
A lender can post an offer instead of waiting for listings: a token, a price in USDG per whole share, a fixed cost in basis points, a term, a minimum take and a total amount. The USDG is escrowed in the engine. A borrower takes the offer with any amount of collateral whose value at the offer price sits between the minimum take and what remains. The deal activates in that same transaction. When the remainder falls below the minimum take, the offer closes and the dust returns to the lender. Offers expire after at most 30 days and can be cancelled at any time for the unused amount.
Lending
Fund part or all of a listing. Your return is the fixed cost times your share; if the borrower walks away, you receive the same share of the collateral. A pledge can be withdrawn until the deal activates. Look at the cap as a share of value, the term, the token's liquidity on Robinhood Chain, and whether you would be happy holding it. Stock tokens can fall below the cap; that risk sits with the lender, not the borrower.
Reclaim rights and lender shares
The borrower's right to reclaim is transferable. The holder can set a price; a buyer pays it and becomes the new reclaim holder. Buying the right does not repay the deal or change the cap: the buyer must still pay the full cap before expiry.
Each lender share is transferable too. The lender sets a price for the whole share; a buyer pays it and steps into every right the share carries. The Earn vault uses the same mechanism to raise liquidity without touching a borrower.
Earn vault
Belay Earn is an ERC-4626 vault on USDG with the share token bUSDG. Share price = (idle USDG + principal of open deals at cost) / shares. A curator funds token listings from the open market, up to 128 open deals. Every outcome is booked by an explicit settle: profit when the cap is paid, a write-off when the borrower walks away, a refund when a listing unwinds. A performance fee applies to realised profit only. Withdrawals come from idle liquidity.
Yield hook
BelayYieldHook is a Uniswap v4 hook with afterSwap and afterSwapReturnDelta permissions. Pools that choose it take a small fee on each swap (0.10% by default, never more than 1%). When the fee is in USDG it goes straight into the Earn vault, which raises the bUSDG share price for every depositor. Fees in other tokens are swept to the protocol treasury.
Fees and parameters
| Origination | 1.00% of the ask, taken at activation (hard cap 2%) |
| Secondary sale | 0.50% of price on reclaim-right and share sales, paid by seller (hard cap 2%) |
| Flash cash-out | 0.50% of the surplus you receive |
| Yield hook | 0.10% of swaps in hooked pools, USDG part to Earn |
| Earn performance fee | 10% of realised profit. No deposit or withdraw fee. |
| Terms | 7, 14, 30 days |
| Max fixed cost | 20% per term |
| Min ask / take | 50 USDG |
| Funding window | up to 72 hours |
| Min fill | 10% of ask or the exact remainder · max 10 lenders |
| Grace | none |
Protocol fees flow to FeeSink, which forwards only to the treasury. The treasury funds what we build next: new collateral lanes, deeper pools and the tools around them.
Contracts
Addresses are listed live on Protocol, each verified on Blockscout.
Risk
Stock tokens on Robinhood Chain are obligations of their issuer that track a reference security; they carry no shareholder rights. Prices can move sharply, including outside US market hours, and DEX liquidity can be thin. LP positions change composition as price moves. Lenders may end up holding collateral worth less than the cap. Borrowers who miss the deadline lose the collateral; there is no grace period and no partial repayment. Smart contracts carry risk. Nothing here is investment advice.
$BELAY
$BELAY is the community token of Belay, launched on pons on Robinhood Chain. Once its market is deep enough the registry can list it as collateral, and after graduation its Uniswap v4 LP positions can be approved too. The site reads the launch straight from the pons contract, so the address shown on $BELAY is always the real one.
It is not required to use the protocol and is not a claim on revenue. It is volatile and can go to zero.
FAQ
Can I repay early?+
Yes, at any time before expiry, for the same cap. The cost is fixed, not pro rated.
I have no USDG. Can I still close my deal?+
Yes. Use cash out: the router repays with your collateral and sends you the rest, in one transaction.
Can I extend?+
Not in place. Reclaim and list again, or sell the reclaim right to someone who can pay the cap.
Does my LP position keep earning?+
Yes. It stays in its pool and accrues fees the whole time. Whoever gets the NFT back collects them.
What if only part of my ask fills?+
Nothing is lent until 100% fills. If the window passes, everything unwinds with no fee.
Who can call claim?+
Anyone. A lender cannot be blocked by other lenders, and a keeper can settle deals in bulk.
Where do fees go?+
To the FeeSink contract, then the treasury, which funds what we build next.