Rysk: Using Options To Turn Volatility Into Yield

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Due to unfavorable market conditions over the past 6+ months, onchain yield selection has become increasingly thin.

During most of 2025, USDC and USDT lending rates on Aave were consistently above 4%. Now, they hover around 2-2.5%.

Ethena’s sUSDe used to consistently provide a 5-9%+ APY. And going back to early 2025 and earlier, its APY was always in the double-digits. Now, it’s roughly 3.5%.

There are countless more examples, but the point remains – the demand for quality, attractive onchain yield is massive. Rysk is here to satisfy it.

When Rysk launched in early 2023, the onchain options scene was still hot, but many didn’t think it had already peaked. Rysk’s first contribution to DeFi, Rysk v1, was designed to be a standard onchain option market – like a decentralized Deribit. 

While Rysk v1 had some success, the upside of such a platform was limited due to perpetual futures dominating the onchain derivatives landscape. But over the years, it’s transformed into a unique app where users can create custom income-generating option positions in major assets. 

The next iteration of Rysk, v12, is changing the game.

Two months ago, I wrote about how options can become a major tool for onchain asset managers because of their ability to generate income. Since then, activity on Rysk v12 has picked up significantly:

I believe that its launch last March marked a turning point – not just for Rysk, but also for the broader decentralized option sector.

That’s a big claim – so, why is v12 such a big deal?

Designed around “Options as an Income,” Rysk v12 provides a way for people to participate in yield-generating strategies with defined return profiles, such as covered calls and cash secured puts. 

Rather than scroll through option chains to find opportunities, v12 makes the process extremely simple. The UX “feels” like a vault, but it’s powered by exchange-like infrastructure. Unlike a vault, depositors choose their own terms (such as strike price and expiry) and are fully in charge of managing their own positions. 

Rysk uses battle-tested derivatives to bring new yield opportunities to a growing selection of assets, including BTC, ETH, SOL, HYPE, and more. 

It essentially turns volatile assets into yield bearing assets, where volatility becomes the source of return rather than the source of risk.

Behind the scenes, a growing network of trading desks compete to fill orders via RFQ (request-for-quote) infrastructure, and all trades are executed fully onchain.

While Rysk v12 is open to everyone, Rysk Premium is another service aimed at a purely institutional audience.

The demand for institutional-grade crypto option markets has never been more obvious than it was in 2025.

Throughout the year, Deribit – the leading centralized crypto option platform – processed $1.3T in notional option volume. That’s more than the previous 3 years combined! 

The liquidity is there, it’s starting to come onchain, and Rysk is perfectly positioned to benefit.

Rysk Premium brings many benefits to money managers by allowing them to execute and manage option positions fully onchain, including:

In February, Hyperion DeFi – a publicly-listed Hyperliquid DeFi company – announced that their Institutional Volatility Income Vault was live on Rysk Premium. So far, the vault has been used internally (~$1.7M AUM) to generate an APR of ~30%! 

Hyperion, which currently holds almost 2M in staked HYPE tokens, also mentioned their intent to generate additional yield on these tokens (beyond staking rewards) in their Q4 earnings press release.

Within the next few months, Hyperion intends on opening access to institutional partners – extending the reach of onchain options within the Hyperliquid ecosystem. 

Rysk v12 is seeing early success by making onchain options easy to use. To keep the momentum going strong, the team plans on vastly increasing distribution across multiple areas:

Back in 2023, Rysk entered the onchain option arena while it was booming. 

Now, with a redesigned platform, it’s leading the rebound back to relevance for retail users and charting new territory with institutions. As the platform grows in size and scope, I’m looking forward to finding opportunities to build yield-generating strategies across multiple asset classes.

This week, we’re earning income from a covered call position on UETH (Unit Ethereum, which is just ETH on the HyperEVM network).

All month, I’ve been making my case that April could be the start of a major crypto rebound. However, this is contingent on BTC staying at or above its current level (~74k at the time of writing). 

This covered call position is making the same bet – a covered call is a simple, 2-leg option position. The position earns premium from selling a call while holding the underlying asset (UETH). Upside is capped above the strike price, while downside exposure remains tied to the underlying asset.

I chose ETH over BTC for 2 reasons:

This is still roughly twice the allocation of our other yield positions, but it’s also a much shorter duration – this position expires on May 1st, so we’ll be able to reinvest the capital in just a couple weeks. 

It’s also a relatively low-risk play – the yield is upfront, so 100% of the risk is speculation on ETH’s price.

Here’s what you’ll see when you go to place an order. At the top of the screen, you can choose your asset, option spread type (covered call or cash-secured put), and expiration date (we chose May 1). 

Under that, you can choose your strike price. You’ll notice that lower strike prices have higher upfront yields; that’s because as you move your strike price up, you’re capturing more potential gains from the underlying asset’s price going up rather than the premium from the option sale.

The upfront yield is $39.64, which is ~3.35% of the value of the 0.5 ETH we deposited (0.5 ETH is currently worth $1,181.78).

As long as ETH is above ~$2,284 (3.35% below its current value) on May 1st, the position will be profitable.

And just like that, an ETH covered call position has been added to the Machines & Money portfolio. Here’s the transaction to prove it!

With this position, our income portfolio continues to branch out to different sources of yield. In total, we now have 4 active income streams:

That wraps up this week’s Feature Friday! If anyone has recommendations on projects to cover or positions to add to our portfolio, we’d love to hear them! Just leave a comment below or send us a DM.

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