YO Protocol
Summary
YO Protocol (yo.xyz), operated by YO Labs, is a San Francisco-based multi-chain DeFi yield optimization protocol founded by former Uber and Amazon executives and backed by Paradigm, Coinbase Ventures, and Foundation Capital with $24 million in total funding. Independent security research published in September 2025 identified significant centralization risks, MEV attack vectors, and EIP-4626 compliance gaps that existing audits had not fully addressed. No hacks, exploits, or regulatory actions have been publicly confirmed against the protocol; a claimed ZachXBT flag has not been corroborated by any findable public source as of May 2026.
Connected Entities
1 entities- + 5 more
Timeline(14 events)
2022-10-01
Exponential (later rebranded to YO Labs) raises $14 million seed round led by Paradigm, with FTX Ventures, Haun Ventures, Polygon, Solana Ventures, and Circle participating.
2022-11-11
FTX, a seed-round investor via FTX Ventures, collapses and files for bankruptcy amid fraud charges against founder Sam Bankman-Fried.
2024-07-11
Exponential.fi launches an all-in-one DeFi investing platform, setting the foundation for the YO Protocol rebrand.
2025-01-15
Offbeat Security completes audit of the yoVault contract, finding no critical or high-severity vulnerabilities.
2025-01-21
Hunter Security completes audit of the yoVault contract.
2025-05-05
YO Protocol's Immunefi bug bounty program goes live with a $10,000 maximum bounty for critical vulnerabilities.
2025-05-29
Spearbit completes audit of yoVault; audit confirms the onUnderlyingBalanceUpdate function can be sandwiched by MEV bots.
2025-09-16
Independent researcher Parlan publishes 'Yo Protocol's Unseen Dangers: Why Code Audits Aren't Enough,' identifying centralization, MEV, accounting, and EIP-4626 compliance risks.
2025-12-13
YO Labs raises $10 million Series A led by Foundation Capital, with Coinbase Ventures, Scribble Ventures, and Launchpad Capital participating, bringing total funding to $24 million.
2026-01-30
YO Protocol announces $YO token and tokenomics: 1 billion total supply, 8% genesis airdrop, 24% to core contributors, 16.5% to investors.
2026-02-05
Genesis airdrop claim portal opens for early depositors and points program participants.
2026-02-24
Zellic completes security audit of the yoVault Solana deployment.
2026-04-13
Accretion completes second audit of the yoVault Solana deployment.
2026-05-06
Genesis airdrop claim window closes.
Decision Log
- hash: 7fyS8S8cn8tpEeVqYPnG5X7ZgySpBzskTqch87FKroDp
This investigation is cryptographically anchored to the Solana blockchain and source URLs are archived via the Internet Archive.
model: claude-sonnet-4-6
generated: 5/4/2026, 2:54:19 AM
last updated: 5/27/2026, 7:45:53 PM
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