# About Upshift

## Overview of Upshift

**Upshift** is the operating system for institutional onchain asset management. 

Upshift lets teams design and launch vaults on 30+ chains with any DeFi and CeFi strategy, underpinned by a robust policy engine. Upshift vaults integrate with prime brokerage **August**, unlocking a $500M+ distribution network of institutional LPs, as well as ancillary services such as margin lending against vault positions. 

Broadly, Upshift enables: 

* **Custom Earn vault design** - Teams ranging from crypto neobanks to institutional credit issuers can use Upshift to design yield strategies on and off chain e.g. lending, basis trade, RWAs. Upshift vaults can deploy simultaneously to multiple protocols, meaning developers can build vaults customised to their users' risk profile.
* **Seamless SDK integration** - The Upshift SDK makes it simple to white-label any existing Upshift vault on third-party frontends. Functionality includes deposit/withdrawal, alongside metadata such as historical performance and total assets deposited. 
* **Institutional ancillary services via August** - By integrating with August, Upshift vault depositors under KYC can take out loans against vault receipt token collateral. Teams can also leverage August’s unique cross-margining architecture to design strategies combining DeFi and CeFi e.g. a basis trade with legs simultaneously on Hyperliquid and Binance.

### About August

**August** is the leading on-chain prime brokerage handling $7bn in monthly volume for institutions. Upshift vaults integrate to August by moving vault deposits into August subaccounts for deployment. 

August subaccounts are smart contract wallets offering multiple benefits:

* Vault curators execute strategies over the August platform, which offers sophisticated trading algorithms, risk management and capital efficient cross-margining
* Policies are enforced on each subaccount, meaning vault curators must remain within the mandate of the vault strategy e.g. only supply to the WETH market on Aave 
* Teams launching vaults benefit from distribution to August's network of institutional LPs, including asset mangers, family offices and hedge funds
* Vault depositors can verify onchain positions in any August subaccount
* Vault depositors may be able to borrow against their positions (requires KYC)<br>


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