NEMO Trading launches NEMO USDC Prime on Upshift
Announcements
24 Jul 2026

NEMO Trading launches NEMO USDC Prime on Upshift

Ethan Luc
Written by Ethan Luc
Yield Vaults
Stablecoin Yield
DeFi Yield
Non-custodial

NEMO Trading has joined Upshift as a curator, and its first stablecoin vault, NEMO USDC Prime, runs automated market-neutral strategies on Ethereum inside Upshift's non-custodial vault infrastructure.

Most onchain vaults to date have drawn their yield from lending markets and real-world assets. NEMO Trading, a quantitative trading team, is joining the Upshift ecosystem as a curator running a different source of return: systematic, automated strategies that trade rate spreads and options while holding no directional view on crypto prices.

Its first stablecoin product, NEMO USDC Prime, launched on Ethereum this month and held about $3.6 million in deposits on 24 July 2026. Depositors put in USDC and receive nUSDC, a receipt token that tracks their share of the vault, while NEMO runs the strategy and Upshift provides the vault contract, the policy controls and the deposit and withdrawal rails.

Deposit into NEMO USDC Prime: app.upshift.finance/pools/1/0x955256B31097dDf47a9E47A95aDfDFB4460D8522

What NEMO Trading does

NEMO Trading builds vaults with active, automated strategies that execute onchain, aiming for the best risk-adjusted return it can find from real market activity. The team describes its work as curating systematic, multi-strategy vaults on Upshift's infrastructure and publishing research from the edge of DeFi. It works alongside its LPs and with trading venues such as Derive, the onchain options exchange, and Tenor.

That profile is closer to a quant desk than to a lending curator. The yield comes from pricing gaps between markets, and it depends on how precisely and how quickly those gaps are captured. Strategies of this kind have mostly lived inside private funds and proprietary books, where outside capital can only get in through a fund subscription.

How NEMO USDC Prime works

NEMO USDC Prime is an automated, multi-strategy, market-neutral vault. Its core is rate arbitrage: the vault holds a collateralised lending position and an offsetting short position in perpetual futures of the same size, so price moves in the underlying asset cancel out. The return is the spread between what the lending leg costs and what the perpetual funding rate pays, which is positive whenever traders holding long perpetual positions pay funding to those holding shorts.

How NEMO USDC Prime earns a market-neutral return Depositors put USDC into NEMO USDC Prime and receive nUSDC. The vault holds a collateralised lending position, which is long the asset, and a short perpetual futures position of the same size, so price moves cancel out. The return is the perpetual funding rate received minus the cost of the lending leg, with an options overlay on top. Returns are variable and can turn negative when funding does. How NEMO USDC Prime earns a market-neutral return Two offsetting legs cancel price moves; the spread between them is the yield Depositors USDC in, nUSDC out NEMO USDC Prime Upshift vault, curated by NEMO Policy engine approved chains, venues, tokens, functions limits Leg 1: lending position collateral posted, asset held = long the asset pays the borrow cost Leg 2: short perpetual same size, opposite direction = short the asset receives funding when positive + Price moves on the two legs cancel out Return = funding received − lending cost plus an options overlay on onchain options venues If funding turns negative, the short leg pays instead and the spread shrinks or reverses Simplified. Venues, sizing and the options overlay vary with market conditions. Returns are variable and not guaranteed.

Options strategies sit on top of that base, run on onchain options venues. Because the book aims to hold no net directional exposure, the vault's USDC value should move with strategy performance and not with the price of ETH or bitcoin. Yields are variable and depend on funding rates, option premiums and execution.

Why the vault runs on Upshift

A quantitative strategy spread across several venues needs tight controls on where capital can go, and depositors need to see what the manager is doing with it. Upshift's architecture handles both. Depositors keep custody of their receipt tokens throughout, the vault contract and its parameters sit onchain, and the policy engine limits the strategy to approved chains, protocols, tokens and contract functions. Vault ownership sits with a multisig, and parameter changes such as fees can sit behind a timelock.

For NEMO, that means launching a product for outside capital without building vault contracts, share accounting, fee logic or a withdrawal queue itself. Upshift has processed more than $550 million in deposits at peak across over 50 vaults on more than 30 chains, and its contracts have been through 10 smart contract audits by 6 independent firms.

Risks

Market-neutral strategies still carry real risk. Funding rates can fall or turn negative for extended periods, which compresses or reverses the spread the vault earns, and options positions can lose money in sharp moves. The strategy depends on the solvency and uptime of the lending markets, perpetual exchanges and options venues where positions sit, and on NEMO's execution. No level of return is guaranteed.

Always make sure to do your own research and be aware of the above and any other risks before depositing.

Deposit into NEMO USDC Prime: app.upshift.finance/pools/1/0x955256B31097dDf47a9E47A95aDfDFB4460D8522

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