Early Birds: Almanak, a DeFAI platform for automating yield

In this new format, we’ll briefly analyze emerging protocols that we find interesting for various reasons: airdrop farming, yield opportunities, and more. The goal is to present their mechanics, core thesis, reasons for our interest, and the main risks involved. For this first episode of the “Early Birds” series, we’ll talk about Almanak.

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Introduction

Over the past few months, artificial intelligence has been gradually entering decentralized finance through a still-nascent sector known as DeFAI. However, very few projects have managed to integrate AI beyond the narrative layer. Almanak stands out as one of the few protocols that genuinely explores this convergence between AI and DeFi.

Almanak is not just a vault protocol offering access to optimized yield strategies. Its core idea is far more ambitious: to automate the research, testing, and deployment of yield strategies through an infrastructure powered by AI agents.

In practice, Almanak aims to replace the human component in the role of curators by developing specialized AIs capable of designing and executing yield strategies in a verifiable, transparent, and non-custodial way, able to manage risks and identify opportunities in real time.

Almanak fits directly within the growing trend of on-chain yield managers, and more specifically within the emerging DeFAI vertical. Its ambition to turn yield generation into a self-learning system explains the growing attention around the protocol.

→ To learn more about Almanak’s approach, see their introduction post.

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Presentation of Almanak

AI Swarms

Almanak defines itself primarily as an infrastructure for on-chain yield automation. Instead of simply aggregating and optimizing pre-existing strategies, the protocol aims to build an intelligence layer on top of DeFi, powered by a network of AI agents capable of analyzing, designing, and executing strategies without direct human intervention.

The Almanak Swarm is the central element of this vision. It is a network of interconnected AI agents, each specialized in a specific task within the lifecycle of a DeFi strategy: design, coding, auditing, simulation, deployment, and monitoring. Together, these agents reproduce the functioning of a quantitative desk, but in a fully automated and transparent way.

Each strategy submitted to the system is translated into operational logic by a strategist agent. This logic is then converted into a smart contract by a coder, verified by a reviewer, and tested on historical and simulated data by a QA engineer. Finally, a deployer publishes the strategy on the main network, while a permission manager controls access and permissions to the smart contracts.

All interactions between agents are traceable and auditable. The system is not a black box: every action, simulation, and execution is recorded so that users can always verify the decisions made.

The goal is not to remove humans entirely, but to delegate analysis and execution tasks to specialized AIs while maintaining a layer of human verification. This is what Almanak calls an AI-powered, human-verified architecture.

alUSD

Almanak’s first product is the Autonomous Liquidity USD (alUSD), a vault designed to automatically deploy yield strategies on stablecoins. It serves as a showcase of what the protocol can achieve.

Despite its name, alUSD is not a stablecoin. When a user deposits USDC into the vault, the vault mints alUSD tokens, which represent vault shares. Each alUSD corresponds to a proportional claim on the underlying assets and their performance.

The value of alUSD evolves with the yield generated. If the vault’s strategies perform well, the price per share increases. When a user withdraws funds, they return (burn) their alUSD and receive back their USDC according to the current price per share.

Vault data such as allocations, transactions, and yield sources are verifiable on-chain. The vault only allocates capital into liquid on-chain pools, such as Curve, in order to maximize risk-adjusted performance while maintaining full withdrawal flexibility.

At the time of writing, the Autonomous Liquidity USD (alUSD) vault holds around 105 million dollars in TVL and offers an annual yield of 6.2 percent.

Strategy Builder

Alongside its first vault, Almanak is developing the Strategy Builder, a key part of its long-term vision. This no-code framework allows any user, developer, or DAO to design and deploy their own yield strategies within compatible vaults. Like the Autonomous Liquidity USD vault, these are built using the ERC-7540 standard.

The process of creating a vault is simple. The user defines the strategy’s logic (allocation, conditions, rebalancing) through a dedicated interface. The Swarm then takes over: it codes, tests, audits, and deploys the strategy automatically into a public or private vault. Simulation results and risk parameters are displayed transparently before deployment.

Once the strategy is live, it becomes a tokenized financial product. Creators can choose to open their vaults to other users and earn management or performance fees. This allows Almanak to introduce an economy of strategies, where the best-performing ones can be shared, replicated, or monetized.

The idea is that instead of writing a full smart contract or launching a protocol, a user can create a strategy, delegate it to specialized AI agents, and monetize it. In that sense, the Strategy Builder positions Almanak as an infrastructure for capital and yield management on-chain.

→ To learn more about the Strategy Builder, see this video by Almanak’s CTO.

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Airdrop, Points Campaign and TGE

Almanak is currently launching its ecosystem through a multi-phase airdrop campaign.

• A Pre-Season took place from January 27 to June 30, 2025, distributing a total of one million points.
• Stage 1 of Season 1 started on July 14, distributing 150,000 points per day for one month.
• Stage 2 ran from August 14 to October 23, distributing 333,000 points per day.
• Stage 3 runs from October 23 to December 11, also distributing 333,000 points per day.

Stage 3 marks the end of Almanak’s first points campaign, which will conclude a few days before the TGE, expected in mid-December.

The team confirmed that point-to-token conversion will occur at a ratio close to 1:1, with full unlock at launch. According to official documentation, 33 percent of the total token supply is allocated to the community. Of that, 45 percent is reserved for the airdrop, representing about 14.85 percent of total supply.

In terms of traction, the protocol currently holds just over 100 million dollars in TVL across roughly 13,000 active users. This figure remains below the late-summer peak of around 170 million, due to sector-wide volatility and issues among vault managers such as Steam Finance.

Valuation estimates place Almanak’s FDV around 90 million dollars at launch, which seems reasonable given current TVL levels but remains dependent on broader market conditions.

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Indicators to Watch and Risks

Almanak fits into a broader trend: on-chain yield managers, protocols designed to simplify access to complex yield strategies. This model could become a key layer in DeFi’s evolution, where users no longer interact directly with underlying protocols but through intermediaries.

Just as artificial intelligence and autonomous agents are becoming part of our daily workflows, they could also play a central role in automating liquidity management. This intersection between AI and DeFi, known as DeFAI, is still in its infancy.

While this sector is still early, so is Almanak itself. For now, the alUSD vault remains the main benchmark for evaluating the system’s capabilities. Its resilience during recent withdrawals following the failure of other vault managers is encouraging, but it is still too soon to confirm the model’s long-term viability.

Beyond the usual metrics such as maintaining TVL after the TGE, yield stability, and organic adoption, the key challenge for Almanak will be attracting a community of creators around the Strategy Builder. This module is the protocol’s true differentiator.

Almanak’s model benefits from aligned incentives: creators are motivated to design strong strategies to attract deposits and earn performance fees. If this virtuous cycle works, the protocol will benefit directly.

However, several risks exist. Beyond the standard smart contract vulnerabilities common to DeFi, Almanak also carries risks specific to its use of AI. If agents behave unpredictably under certain market conditions, or if human oversight is insufficient, strategies could generate unexpected losses.

→ To join Almanak, we invite you to use our affiliate link.

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Conclusion and Opinion

Almanak’s TGE, scheduled shortly after the end of Stage 3, arrives at a time when almost every token launch is rejected by the market. Investors are reluctant to hold new altcoins, preferring to stay in stablecoins and move from one farming opportunity to the next.

The launch also comes early in Almanak’s lifecycle. Despite a projected FDV of around 90 million dollars and a TVL well above that, it is likely that the token will face a significant correction after the TGE, as airdrop participants take profits. This does not question the project’s fundamentals but reflects a market reality: post-airdrop sell pressure is inevitable.

Paradoxically, this situation could also create opportunity. A correction after launch could bring the valuation to more reasonable levels, offering a healthier foundation for a potential rebound as Almanak’s products, especially the Strategy Builder, prove their effectiveness.

In other words, a post-TGE dump is not necessarily a sign of weakness but rather a natural adjustment in a defensive market. What matters most will be tracking the adoption of the Strategy Builder and investor interest in the protocol’s long-term model.

For now, Almanak remains an early-stage protocol worth watching, with a distinctive value proposition and promising progress. The points campaign provides a way to gain exposure, for those aware of the risks inherent to interacting with such a young system.

→ To access our Almanak farming strategy (with a 302x points boost), join Premium and find it in our Alpha Feed.

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