Nook has now processed over $500M in transactions

We took something complex and made it easy - and now we have reached $500M in transactions through it.

Nook has now successfully transacted over $500M through it's platform, including deposits, withdrawals and rebalances of portfolio positions.

I didn't think we would be on track to process $1B in transactions a year through our service - but Nook has proven that (1) there is strong interest in higher yield from over collateralized lending and (2) a product that keeps you positioned well across multiple positions is more value than one singular position.

It's a big milestone for our team and our partners at Stripe, Bridge, Privy and Coinbase.

This was not the norm a year ago

What was once impractical a couple of years ago is now a reality. Moving money onchain, from one protocol position to another - used to be something only whales or power users could justify. The time commitment and gas fees were both steep commitments. Not just expensive but risky.

Every tweak to your portfolio meant going into a wallet, signing multiple transactions, paying high mainnet gas fees, and then waiting for everything to confirm. During the 2021, I remember a single (but complex) DeFi interaction on Ethereum mainnet could easily run into tens of dollars in gas, with many users reporting $100+ transactions at peak congestion from popular. For most everyday savers, doing that kind of active management on a daily basis didn’t make economic sense.

What does this mean for our platform?

Nook flips that equation. Today, Nook users rebalance on average 1.2x times every 24 hours thanks to our automated rebalancing engine. If you had tried to mimic that behavior manually on Ethereum mainnet three years ago—before L2s and modern routing really took off—you’d be looking at something like 438 rebalances per year (1.2 × 365). Even using a conservative estimate of $30 in gas per full rebalance (well below many real-world DeFi experiences at the time), that’s about $13,000 per year per account in transaction costs just to keep your yield optimized. It’s obvious why almost no one did that: the fees would have eaten the yield, and then some.

By running this logic automatically on low-cost infrastructure, Base, created by the Coinbase team, and batching work under the hood, Nook turns something that was economically impossible for normal users into a quiet background feature: your money moves across vetted protocols, often more than once a day, without you having to think about gas prices, bridges, or transaction queues.

The main functions behind orchestration

The two main functions behind Nook and this orchestration layer are (1) the automatic and manual rebalancing feature and (2) the automated claim swap and redeem functionality back into USDC. By automating these two functions, we have removed 9+ steps for a user, per day - and over the past 90 days have increased the average APY of the highest earning protocols from 8.6% to 9.34% APY (almost a full 1% delta.)

Why we didn’t take shortcuts

Other service providers in the space have taken shortcuts - opting out of creating a direct connection between you and the protocol, and instead, deferring to a “man in the middle” smart contract. We have seen it over and over again. A singular smart contract for everyone’s money. Pooled together and indistinguishable.

It’s powerful and easy to create - but it’s not what our customers have asked for, and we don’t think it’s a strong foundation to build on. Customers don’t want their funds intermingled into a smart contract that could be vulnerable to a single point of failure. With security, risk and safety top of mind for our customers, we have proven that we can connect thousands of customers, automatically, directly to multiple DeFi earning sources - at scale and at cost without adding an additional layer of complexity (and risk.)

At Nook we believe that every extra component, layer and piece is an increased risk - so we avoid it and make the connection from you to our earning partners directly. These include AAVE and Morpho, two established players in the space with over $70B in TVL (on their platforms) - curated by top-rated firms such as Spark, Steakhouse, Seamless and Gauntlet.

What we learned

When the opportunity to earn 3x your bank account becomes easy and lower cost (free) for the end user - money starts to move: in and out but more importantly - from one earning source to another.

Since launch we have successfully executed over 120k transactions. From depositing funds to our four earning partners (Aave Core Market or the Seamless, Spark, Steakhouse Seamless Vaults) (8% of our transactions) to to withdrawals (5% of transactions) to rebalancing (86% of transactions.) Users feel comfortable depositing small amounts, as low as $5 to try out Nook, to large amounts of money above $1M.

What comes next

I didn't think we would get this far this quickly. But now that we are here, I want us to raise the bar.

We are excited to keep growing Nook. The main way to get there is by giving people more ways to transact. Other ways to deposit, withdraw and rebalance - including new earning sources and partners and new assets to earn on. Giving you the ability to earn more from more optionality. We think expanding the set of options for customers - when most services stop up at 1-2 sources, is the best path forward for higher earnings.

This number not only shows a vote of confidence in what we have built - but also that our mission speaks to people. And reflects what they want. Orchestration between our wallet provider, infra, payment, fraud and protocol partners, shows that together, Nook brings powerful onchain earning primitives options together - with ease of use for everyone. It's not just technology. Or aligning one, two or even three of these pieces. But aligning all five of these for our customers into a consumer grade experience has proven the power of a focused, high-output team.

I will keep you posted on when we get closer to $1B.