Verify a decision

{"actor":"system:backfill","investigation_id":"9ae77836-88eb-4953-98b5-9ee378fc75a6","kind":"publish","page_slug":"sthype-valantis","published_at":"2026-10-13T05:23:27.551Z","sequence_num":1,"snapshot":{"content_type":"investigation","entity_name":"stHYPE (Valantis)","sections":[{"content":"On 19 August 2025 The Block reported that Valantis, a modular DEX protocol, acquired StakedHYPE, then the second-ranked liquid staking platform on Hyperliquid's HyperEVM behind Kinetiq. Terms were not disclosed. Valantis Labs took over operations, development and scaling. Addison Spiegel, founder of Thunderhead (StakedHYPE's parent), joined Valantis as an advisor, and Thunderhead's six-person team did not move over. The Block reported Valantis was backed by Kraken Ventures, Figment Capital and Robot Ventures and raised $7.5 million at a $40 million valuation in November 2024. Valantis also operates STEX, an AMM for staked assets with stHYPE and kHYPE pools, so the issuer of stHYPE and a main venue for trading it are the same organisation (vertical integration, which Valantis's CEO described as the strategy). Valantis documentation describes the product set as including stHYPE, STEX LP and Valantis Prime.","heading":"Overview and Valantis relationship","severity":"medium","sources":[{"credibility":2,"name":"The Block: Valantis acquires StakedHYPE","type":"news_article","url":"https://www.theblock.co/post/367418/valantis-acquires-stakedhype-a-liquid-staking-platform-on-hyperliquid"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Valantis documentation","type":"official","url":"https://docs.valantis.xyz"}]},{"content":"Valantis documentation states stHYPE stakes HYPE through seven HyperCore stake accounts: five standard accounts and two non-standard deployer accounts, and that none of the accounts lend or rehypothecate. It says protocol execution is managed by smart contracts without centralized custody, and that keeper functions handle staking, unstaking and rebasing and do not custody funds. Staking Rewards describes yield as coming from a curated, diversified validator set on HyperCore. Valantis's published pages reviewed do not explain how individual validators are selected; the deployer accounts' allocation is said to follow a Deployer Curation Process. Deployer accounts earn a premium but carry 30 to 183 day recall periods and additional deployer slashing risk. Valantis documents that, as of 19 September 2026, the two deployer addresses held no stake after the Ethena HyENA HIP-3 exchange sunset. Nansen's risk page states Nansen operates a validator in the Valantis ecosystem, handles only validator infrastructure and holds no user assets. These statements are self-reported by the parties and were not independently verified on-chain.","heading":"Custody and validator choice","severity":"medium","sources":[{"credibility":2,"name":"Valantis docs: Understanding stHYPE (stake accounts)","type":"official","url":"https://docs.valantis.xyz/stakedhype/stake-accounts.md"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Valantis docs: Transparency and Risks","type":"official","url":"https://docs.valantis.xyz/stakedhype/transparency-and-risks.md"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Staking Rewards: stHYPE rating","type":"research","url":"https://www.stakingrewards.com/defi/0xffaa4a3d97fe9107cef8a3f48c069f577ff76cc1"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Nansen Academy: Risk Disclosures, Valantis stHYPE Staking Vault","type":"official","url":"https://academy.nansen.ai/articles/7537598-risk-disclosures-valantis-sthype-staking-vault"}]},{"content":"Valantis documentation states that current execution controls are role-gated and multisig-administered, that no active on-chain veto mechanism enforces upgrades, and that there is no protocol-wide on-chain upgrade timelock for proxy upgrades. A timelock and a stHYPE holder veto modelled on Lido's Dual-Governance Framework are described as planned, tied to the 2026 adoption of Valantis Governance. Staking Rewards, in a page updated 8 September 2026, states a 48-hour on-chain timelock applies to every contract change with no bypass, which conflicts with Valantis's own governance page; the discrepancy is unresolved here and readers should check the current on-chain configuration.","heading":"Governance and admin controls","severity":"high","sources":[{"credibility":2,"name":"Valantis docs: Upgrade and Risk Governance","type":"official","url":"https://docs.valantis.xyz/stakedhype/transparency-and-risks/upgrade-and-risk-governance.md"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Valantis docs: Transparency and Risks","type":"official","url":"https://docs.valantis.xyz/stakedhype/transparency-and-risks.md"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Staking Rewards: stHYPE rating","type":"research","url":"https://www.stakingrewards.com/defi/0xffaa4a3d97fe9107cef8a3f48c069f577ff76cc1"}]},{"content":"Valantis's audits page lists six stHYPE reviews: Three Sigma (February 2025), Pashov (October 2025 and November 2025), Guardian (November 2025 and January 2026) and Obsidian (April 2026). It also lists Stake Exchange (STEX, stHYPE and kHYPE AMM) audits by Hexens (March and May 2025) and Zenith (March 2025), plus earlier reviews of Valantis core, periphery, HOT AMM and Validly by Hexens, Statemind, Watchpug and Sherlock. Staking Rewards lists Three Sigma, Guardian and Pashov as code auditors and states critical and high findings were remediated. The report contents were not reviewed here. Valantis states that audits do not eliminate vulnerabilities.","heading":"Audits","severity":"low","sources":[{"credibility":2,"name":"Valantis docs: Audits","type":"official","url":"https://docs.valantis.xyz/resources/audits.md"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Pashov stHYPE security review (Oct 2025)","type":"research","url":"https://github.com/pashov/audits/blob/master/team/pdf/stHYPE-security-review_2025-10-13.pdf"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Staking Rewards: stHYPE rating","type":"research","url":"https://www.stakingrewards.com/defi/0xffaa4a3d97fe9107cef8a3f48c069f577ff76cc1"}]},{"content":"Valantis documents that Hyperliquid validators can be slashed for protocol-defined failures, that non-standard modules add further slashing and longer-withdrawal risks, that there is no guaranteed insolvency backstop for user losses, and that stHYPE runs no active public bug bounty program. Withdrawals have no fee and normally target about 7 days, paid from new deposits and standard-account unstakes, with longer waits possible in large unwinds. Nansen warns stHYPE may trade at a discount to HYPE and that redemption near HYPE value is not guaranteed. Staking Rewards rates stHYPE BB+ (Elevated Risk) on a v0.1-beta framework (Security BBB, Strategy BBB, Operations B), and notes a treasury that is small relative to TVL and no dedicated safety module or insurance fund.","heading":"Financial risk: slashing, withdrawals, depeg and loss coverage","severity":"high","sources":[{"credibility":2,"name":"Valantis docs: Transparency and Risks","type":"official","url":"https://docs.valantis.xyz/stakedhype/transparency-and-risks.md"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Valantis docs: Understanding stHYPE","type":"official","url":"https://docs.valantis.xyz/stakedhype/stake-accounts.md"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Nansen Academy: Risk Disclosures","type":"official","url":"https://academy.nansen.ai/articles/7537598-risk-disclosures-valantis-sthype-staking-vault"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Staking Rewards: stHYPE rating","type":"research","url":"https://www.stakingrewards.com/defi/0xffaa4a3d97fe9107cef8a3f48c069f577ff76cc1"}]},{"content":"The requester reported about $212M TVL (stHYPE $208.3M plus STEX $4.0M) from DefiLlama on 7 October 2026. This could not be re-verified: the DefiLlama web page returned HTTP 403, and the public API record for Valantis showed roughly $187.5M on Hyperliquid L1 in one reading and a series data point of about $217.3M near September 2026, with the file truncated before the latest values. The Block reported more than $200M for StakedHYPE at the August 2025 acquisition. Treat TVL as approximate.","heading":"TVL","severity":"low","sources":[{"credibility":2,"name":"DefiLlama API: Valantis","type":"research","url":"https://api.llama.fi/protocol/valantis"},{"credibility":2,"name":"The Block: Valantis acquires StakedHYPE","type":"news_article","url":"https://www.theblock.co/post/367418/valantis-acquires-stakedhype-a-liquid-staking-platform-on-hyperliquid"}]},{"content":"Searches for an exploit, hack or depeg involving stHYPE or Valantis returned no reports. This is an absence of evidence in the sources searched, not confirmation that none occurred. Valantis's documentation describes a monitoring and incident response page that was not reviewed.","heading":"Incidents","severity":"low","sources":[{"credibility":2,"name":"Valantis docs index","type":"official","url":"https://docs.valantis.xyz/llms.txt"}]}],"sources_used":[{"credibility":2,"name":"The Block: Valantis acquires StakedHYPE","type":"news_article","url":"https://www.theblock.co/post/367418/valantis-acquires-stakedhype-a-liquid-staking-platform-on-hyperliquid"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Valantis documentation","type":"official","url":"https://docs.valantis.xyz"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Valantis docs: Audits","type":"official","url":"https://docs.valantis.xyz/resources/audits.md"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Valantis docs: Transparency and Risks","type":"official","url":"https://docs.valantis.xyz/stakedhype/transparency-and-risks.md"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Valantis docs: Upgrade and Risk Governance","type":"official","url":"https://docs.valantis.xyz/stakedhype/transparency-and-risks/upgrade-and-risk-governance.md"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Valantis docs: Understanding stHYPE","type":"official","url":"https://docs.valantis.xyz/stakedhype/stake-accounts.md"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Valantis docs index","type":"official","url":"https://docs.valantis.xyz/llms.txt"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Staking Rewards: stHYPE rating","type":"research","url":"https://www.stakingrewards.com/defi/0xffaa4a3d97fe9107cef8a3f48c069f577ff76cc1"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Nansen Academy: Risk Disclosures","type":"official","url":"https://academy.nansen.ai/articles/7537598-risk-disclosures-valantis-sthype-staking-vault"},{"credibility":2,"name":"DefiLlama API: Valantis","type":"research","url":"https://api.llama.fi/protocol/valantis"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Pashov stHYPE security review (Oct 2025)","type":"research","url":"https://github.com/pashov/audits/blob/master/team/pdf/stHYPE-security-review_2025-10-13.pdf"}],"summary":"stHYPE is a liquid staking token for HYPE on Hyperliquid, issued by Valantis Labs after Valantis acquired the StakedHYPE platform from Thunderhead in August 2025. Valantis documentation lists multiple third-party audits, while its own documents and a third-party rating describe multisig-administered upgrades with no on-chain upgrade timelock, no insolvency backstop and no public bug bounty. No exploit or depeg incident was found in the searches run. The requested TVL figure (about $212M) could not be independently re-verified from a primary source.","timeline":[{"date":"2024-11","event":"Valantis reportedly raised $7.5M at a $40M valuation.","source":"The Block","source_url":"https://www.theblock.co/post/367418/valantis-acquires-stakedhype-a-liquid-staking-platform-on-hyperliquid"},{"date":"2025-02","event":"Three Sigma stHYPE audit (per Valantis audits page).","source":"Valantis docs","source_url":"https://docs.valantis.xyz/resources/audits.md"},{"date":"2025-08-19","date_evidence":"Valantis acquired StakedHYPE ... August 19, 2025","event":"Valantis announces acquisition of StakedHYPE from Thunderhead; terms undisclosed.","source":"The Block","source_url":"https://www.theblock.co/post/367418/valantis-acquires-stakedhype-a-liquid-staking-platform-on-hyperliquid"},{"date":"2025-10","event":"Pashov stHYPE security review published.","source":"Pashov audits","source_url":"https://github.com/pashov/audits/blob/master/team/pdf/stHYPE-security-review_2025-10-13.pdf"},{"date":"2026-04","event":"Obsidian stHYPE audit (per Valantis audits page).","source":"Valantis docs","source_url":"https://docs.valantis.xyz/resources/audits.md"},{"date":"2026-09","event":"Ethena HyENA HIP-3 exchange sunset; Valantis reports its two deployer stake accounts held no stake afterward.","source":"Valantis docs","source_url":"https://docs.valantis.xyz/stakedhype/stake-accounts.md"}]},"v":1}