Lightspeed Inside Upshift: Building the Future of Onchain Vaults | Aya Kantorovich
May 5, 2026
Aya Kantorovich, Co-CEO of Upshift and former FalconX builder, talks vault infrastructure and institutional on-chain integrations. She discusses origins in on-chain prime and how customer demand shaped multi-chain vaults. Security, social engineering vs smart-contract risk, and isolating strategy risk come up. Aya previews Solana vaults, RWAs, PayFi, and why institutions want tokenized NAV and 24/7 markets.
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Vaults Originated From On‑Chain Prime Needs
- Upshift spun out from an on-chain prime product that consolidated cross-margin positions across OTC, options, derivatives, spot, CeFi and DeFi into a single smart-contract vault.
- Aya launched August's on-chain prime in 2022 then expanded to Upshift vaults in 2024–25 after institutional clients requested aggregated, transparent counterparty risk exposure.
Underwrite Partners And Build Fast Alerting
- Do implement strict partner underwriting and fast alerting for vault integrations to limit exposure during hacks or social engineering incidents.
- Upshift monitors on‑chain movements within seconds and builds war rooms with partners to respond quickly rather than underwriting strategy risk itself.
Diversification Lowers Rate Volatility And Boosts Yield
- Diversified cross‑protocol lending strategies can increase yield and reduce rate volatility compared with single isolated markets.
- An analysis showed a diversified USDC lending approach earned ~2% more yield with ~40% less rate volatility versus a single market.