Gearbox

Rejected venues wait the longest for re-review; a rejection has to earn another look before the scheduled date.

Gearbox is a credit protocol: passive lenders fund pools that borrowers draw on for leveraged positions. It held about $4.8M in TVL across Ethereum, Etherlink, Plasma, and Monad at the 2026-08-14 survey, under the $100M floor we require before a protocol can hold advised client money. The lending side would still need review on its own merits at scale, since the borrowers are levered traders. Rejected on size: an advised book of $1M to $8M from one practice becomes the exit crush at this scale, whatever the protocol’s quality.

Kill criteria: the events that revoke this verdict
• TVL sustained above $100M for 30 days

The research file

Applicability to the surveyed record

Gearbox documents on-chain credit infrastructure that connects passive ERC-4626 liquidity pools to borrowers operating through constrained Credit Accounts. Lenders receive non-rebasing Diesel Tokens, borrower interest raises their exchange rate, and pool capital is allocated to Credit Suites under debt ceilings, establishing a pooled-lending product rather than a direct strategy position.

Current observation and perimeter

The DefiLlama protocol API read on 2026-08-15 classified Gearbox as Lending and showed approximately $17.39M TVL, still well below the shared v1 $100M threshold. It reported live balances across Ethereum, Arbitrum, Binance, Etherlink, Hemi, Lisk, Monad, Optimism, Plasma, Somnia, and Sonic; the registry perimeter is updated to that current eleven-chain survey.

Control and exit applicability

Market curators set Credit-Suite debt ceilings and risk parameters, while Credit Accounts restrict borrowed capital to approved assets and adapters and liquidation rules police solvency. Lender withdrawals are instant only to the extent a pool has unborrowed liquidity; high utilization can block exit, and an emergency admin can pause pool deposits and LP-token withdrawals or restrict borrowing and collateral operations.

Why the class rule decides

The shared v1 below-materiality dossier controls because Gearbox remains below $100M despite a clearly documented multi-chain pooled-credit mechanism. Reopen after DefiLlama TVL remains above $100M for 30 consecutive days, then review each live instance and curator, debt ceilings, Credit-Suite allocations, oracle and liquidation design, bad-debt and incident history, withdrawal liquidity under stress, emergency powers, and named lending alternatives.

Sources

The claims above trace to these. Where a number could not be independently verified, the thesis says so.

• Gearbox — protocol and capital-flow overview · primary · accessed 2026-08-15
  Supports: passive pools, Credit Accounts, borrower interest, debt ceilings, solvency
• Gearbox — lender and LP risk guide · primary · accessed 2026-08-15
  Supports: Diesel Token, utilization, withdrawal constraints, curator controls, timelock
• Gearbox — liquidity pool mechanics · primary · accessed 2026-08-15
  Supports: ERC-4626 pool, Diesel Token, instant withdrawal condition, Credit Suites, allocation limits
• Gearbox — emergency admin powers · primary · accessed 2026-08-15
  Supports: pause pool, withdrawal pause, debt limit, adapter control, emergency liquidation
• DefiLlama — Gearbox survey record · secondary · accessed 2026-08-15
  Supports: current TVL, current chains, Lending 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.