Security mechanisms

Byzantine Prime’s security is built in layers - each one independently limiting what any single party can do with client funds.

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Non-custodial architecture

Byzantine Finance never controls your assets. Funds are held in a smart contract vault that is exclusively controlled by you through your passkey. Byzantine cannot move, freeze, or access your funds without your explicit cryptographic authorisation. For more on passkeys and how they work, see Understanding passkeys.

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Audited smart contracts

Byzantine’s vault is built on Morpho V2’s architecture and further strengthened by Byzantine’s custom risk tooling. The complete codebase - including all custom adapters - has been independently reviewed by eight security firms. All critical and high-severity findings identified during testing were remediated before deployment. For the full audit table and reports, see Security audits.

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Bug bounty programmes

Two live bug bounty programmes incentivise independent security researchers to find and responsibly disclose any remaining vulnerabilities. Each programme offers up to $2,500,000: Teams that are uncertain about their code don’t offer $2.5 million for someone to find a bug.

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Real-time monitoring with Hypernative

Byzantine integrates with Hypernative, a real-time threat detection platform used by leading decentralised finance (DeFi) protocols and institutions. Hypernative monitors all deployed contracts and protocol interactions continuously, with triggers including:

• High liquidity utilisation in an underlying lending market
• Unusually high liquidation volume in an underlying protocol
• Large or unusual asset movements within a market
• Suspected attack patterns in newly deployed on-chain code

In most cases, Hypernative notifies Byzantine and Keyrock of any irregularity. In rare, urgent scenarios, Hypernative has the power to trigger an emergency function that withdraws funds from an underlying lending market into the safety of the Byzantine main vault before any exploit can propagate.

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Where your stablecoins are held

Your stablecoins are held on-chain within Byzantine Prime’s smart contracts and, when deployed, within the lending markets integrated into the protocol (Aave, Morpho, Maker/Sky). These contracts are non-custodial - no intermediary has discretionary access. Each depositor’s position is fully traceable, and total on-chain balances can be verified by anyone at any time. When you withdraw, the contracts unwind the relevant share of lending positions and transfer stablecoins directly to your wallet.

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Immutability and upgrade controls

Byzantine does not have the ability to upgrade the smart contract that administers user funds. This means no one - including Byzantine - can change the rules governing how your assets are held or deployed, without going through a publicly visible process with a lengthy timelock that gives clients time to withdraw. Any protocol upgrade or dependency change automatically triggers a new independent audit before redeployment.

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Insurance

For clients who want an additional layer of protection on top of these technical safeguards, Byzantine Prime offers optional institutional insurance through AON, covering losses from smart contract failure. See Insurance for full details.