Flying Tulip ftUSD
Rejected venues wait the longest for re-review; a rejection has to earn another look before the scheduled date.
Flying Tulip’s ftUSD is a stablecoin backed by USDC, USDT, and wrapped collateral that the protocol deploys into Aave yield strategies; holders can stake into sftUSD to earn FT rewards funded by protocol fees. At the 2026-08-15 survey it held about $2.27M across Ethereum and Sonic, far under our $100M materiality line. Rejected on size: one practice advising 100 households moves $1M to $8M into a venue on the same research, and below $100M TVL that book becomes the exit crush. Size alone decides it, whatever the protocol’s quality. Above the line, the token reward mechanics would get their own review.
- TVL sustained above $100M for 30 days
The research file
Mechanism applicability
ftUSD is a dollar-target token; holders opt into yield by staking it for sftUSD. Current documentation says the implemented strategy is a USDC and USDT wrapper supplying Aave, while delta-neutral lending, staking, derivatives, and other modules remain staged. Net strategy yield and protocol revenue flow through the treasury and may be distributed to sftUSD stakers as claimable FT rather than automatically compounding.
Current observation and lifecycle
The DefiLlama protocol API read on 2026-08-15 classified Flying Tulip ftUSD as a Yield Aggregator and reported approximately $2.27M across Ethereum and Sonic. The live ftUSD interface supports buy, sell, stake, and unstake, and documentation updated 2026-07-15 distinguishes implemented Aave stablecoin lending from roadmap strategies. This active two-chain record directly satisfies the shared v1 below-materiality dossier.
Control and exit applicability
Authorized roles can change strategy weights, caps, venue ordering, pauses, and other parameters through separated multisig roles and circuit breakers. Selling ftUSD or unstaking sftUSD occurs at the prevailing rate with any cooldown or exit settings shown in the app; strategy liquidity, external Aave exposure, peg conditions, and later staking queues can delay or impair exits. These are material later-review questions but do not overcome the current size failure.
Why the class rule decides
At roughly $2.27M survey TVL, even the low end of the modeled advised book would approach half the tracked system. The shared v1 below-materiality dossier therefore decides. Reopen after DefiLlama TVL remains above $100M for 30 consecutive days, then test deployed rather than roadmap strategies, role and pause powers, peg and venue stress, incidents and audits, proposed-size ftUSD sale and sftUSD unstake capacity, reward economics, and named approved stable-yield alternatives.
Sources
The claims above trace to these. Where a number could not be independently verified, the thesis says so.
- Flying Tulip — ftUSD product and lifecycle · primary · accessed 2026-08-15
Supports: ftUSD, sftUSD, implemented Aave strategy, roadmap strategies, stake and unstake, yield distribution - Flying Tulip — risks and security controls · primary · accessed 2026-08-15
Supports: multisig roles, pauses, circuit breakers, venue risk, liquidity risk, incident response - Flying Tulip — live ftUSD interface · primary · accessed 2026-08-15
Supports: live lifecycle, buy, sell, stake, unstake, current product interface - DefiLlama — Flying Tulip ftUSD survey record · secondary · accessed 2026-08-15
Supports: current TVL, Ethereum, Sonic, Yield Aggregator category, survey observation
Inherited controls
The verdict above grades the protocol layer. Every position also inherits the asset it holds and the chain it settles on. The least safe layer sets the position’s grade, and the position table names which one that is.
| Chain | Verdict | Grade | Control constraint |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ethereum | Approved | sovereign | No sequencer, no upgrade key, no operator who can be compelled — rule changes require social consensus. |