By Keel Research Team · Updated May 12, 2026
A 6-asset basket of post-2024 DeFi yield, restaking, and RWA protocols — ENA, ONDO, PENDLE, MORPHO, ETHFI, SYRUP. Equal-weighted. Currently in drawdown YTD — useful as a contrarian add, or as the short leg of a sector-rotation L/S index.
Window: Jan 1 — May 1, 2026 (YTD). Equal-weight, vol-targeted sizing. $10,000 start → $7,183 end.
Verified 2026-05-12 against the live Keel backtest engine on Hyperliquid price data. Past backtest performance is not indicative of future returns.
Bring this index live on Hyperliquid via Keel, or open the Index Builder to tweak weighting, add a short side, or change the asset list.
Opens the Keel strategy editor with the index pre-built. New users sign in first; the config persists through sign-up.
| Ticker | Category | YTD return | Target weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| MORPHO | DeFi | +78.9% | 16.7% |
| PENDLE | DeFi | -25.4% | 16.7% |
| ONDO | DeFi | -30.5% | 16.7% |
| SYRUP | DeFi | -33.2% | 16.7% |
| ETHFI | DeFi | -44.2% | 16.7% |
| ENA | DeFi | -52.2% | 16.7% |
Sector tilt: MORPHO is the lone winner (+79%). The other five are in drawdown. If you have a MORPHO-conviction view, the Index Builder lets you tilt away from the rest.
The pipeline loads 15-minute price data for the six DeFi yield + restaking perps, resamples to daily bars, and applies equal-weight allocation with buffered execution to minimize turnover. 23 trades over the 4-month window.
The basket spans the four sub-narratives of new-generation DeFi: stablecoin issuance (ENA, RESOLV, USUAL), tokenized treasuries (ONDO), yield tokenization (PENDLE), and liquid restaking (ETHFI). MORPHO sits in lending markets — closest to traditional DeFi in shape but newer in execution.
The right framing: this index is in a corrective phase, not a structural collapse. Real revenue at MORPHO and ONDO is growing; the prices haven’t yet caught up. If you want to express that view tactically rather than passively, open the Index Builder and add weighting tilts.
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A 6-asset basket of newer-generation DeFi protocols built around yield, restaking, lending, stablecoins, and RWAs: Ethena (ENA, synthetic-dollar yield), Ondo (ONDO, tokenized treasuries), Pendle (PENDLE, yield tokenization), Morpho (MORPHO, lending markets), ether.fi (ETHFI, liquid restaking), Syrup (SYRUP, on-chain credit). The thesis is yield-bearing DeFi as the post-2024 narrative replacing the 2021 AMM-DEX era.
DeFi was a 2024 narrative; 2026 capital has rotated to AI and HL ecosystem. ENA (-52%) and ETHFI (-44%) led the drawdown — both depend on broader ETH ecosystem flow which has been weak relative to majors. MORPHO is the standout exception (+79%) on real lending volume growth.
Two angles. (1) Contrarian: if you believe yield-bearing DeFi is structurally sound and just out-of-favor, the basket is a sector add on weakness. (2) Sector rotation: open the Index Builder, switch to long/short mode, long AI Compute, short this DeFi-yield basket. Lets you isolate the AI-vs-DeFi spread — which has been a real cross-sectional alpha source YTD.
Those are in a separate DeFi Blue Chips bucket (on the roadmap). This index is intentionally focused on the post-2024 generation. The two cohorts have different risk profiles — old-guard DeFi tracks ETH closely, new-gen tracks yield + restaking flows.
Build a long-AI / short-DeFi sector-rotation L/S index. Toggle "Add short side" with this basket.
The opposite narrative — picks-and-shovels AI. The natural long leg in an AI-vs-DeFi rotation.
Find DeFi names with high negative funding — bearish positioning is often where the snapback comes from.