In today's episode of 'What has the @ParagonsDAO treasury been up to?' we have another "exciting" update on where we have sat a portion of our cash that the three of you reading these may have seen us mention before: @Katana Network. 🥷

Katana is a DeFi-first Layer-2 blockchain built to unify liquidity, generate real yield and slash slippage by reinvesting sequencer/app fees into deep markets. You earn just from holding assets on-chain, but can also use those assets in other DeFi protocols.

We previously deposited 200 $ETH into their pre-mainnet campaign from which we earned Krates containing $KAT, and 200 each into the @turtledotxyz and @EtherFi campaigns. We shouted about Krates being underfarmed back then, from which we earned a 10x top-up from Krates in vKAT.

vKat works similar to other ve-tokens vKAT, so while it is locked it grants governance rights, allows us to direct emissions and gives us a share of the fees generated by the protocol’s supported pools. We will be one of the largest initial holders of vKAT.

What's more, the deposited $ETH earned substantial $KAT rewards at 20%+ based on a $1bn FDV. As mentioned previously, we have since divested all of this $ETH in August near the market top, taking a small haircut on these rewards for the benefit of achieving optimal sales prices.

We have since redeposited c.$1m of $USDC back into Katana again via the Turtle frontend, now earning at a massive c.50% APY at $1bn FDV, with a significant boost from being an early depositor before Sep 1st. The APY comes from various sources and is paid out in $USDC and $KAT.

At present we are simply holding funds on-chain as $vbUSDC in the @yearnfi vault, however we are weighing the risks vs rewards of depositing this collateral into low risk DeFi strategies such as @MorphoLabs or @spectra_finance which allows you to further compound your earnings.

Circling back to @turtledotxyz, we used Turtle as the frontend for some of our deposits into Katana. Turtle connects liquidity and protocols, providing access to third party vaults on Katana, Linea, Avax and TAC with competitive yields, while farming its own token $TURTLE.

We managed to use this route to top their liquidity leaderboard and earn 53k $TURTLE, which after an early claim haircut, was sold earlier for a further $10k boost to this strategy and the treasury. We will continue to use Turtle for further opportunities as they arise.

To date the DAO has earned over 1 million $KAT/vKAT on top of native $USDC yield and $TURTLE, which will continue to grow over time. TGE is expected before Q1 2026 and deliver a significant boost to the treasury even at lower than the currently estimated $1bn FDV/10c per token.

You can check holdings and strategies at any time via our Treasury Dashboard () and DeBank bundle (). We look forward to sharing more information about recent activities in the coming weeks. Feel free to ask interim questions below.