By Railnet Team —
Wintermute’s Igor Igamberdiev, Armitage lead, on skin in the game, running your own liquidations, why fintechs go onchain and building on Railnet.
Most curators deploy other people's money under a mandate. Wintermute has spent years trading through crashes, bad debt and liquidity crunches with its own capital on the line. In May it launched Armitage, its curation business, led by Igor Igamberdiev, Wintermute's Head of Research and a core contributor to SEAL 911, crypto's emergency hotline for live exploits.
In the fourth episode of Railnet Talks, Igor joined Railnet co-founders Laszlo Szabo and Darshan Vaidya to talk about where his view of risk comes from, why fintechs are moving onchain, and why Armitage brought its USDC strategies to Railnet.
Watch the full episode on YouTube.
How did you end up in crypto, and how does your research background help in your current job?
Igor Igamberdiev: I started in crypto in late 2017, during the big bull market. With friends, we decided to build arbitrage bots. Back then we only had centralized exchanges, no DeFi at all. I then worked for another trading fund until DeFi Summer, so around three years.
After that I joined The Block. I felt I had a good edge on the onchain side: figuring out how things work, how exploits were performed, hands-on with Solidity. I helped with content and built data dashboards. We added a ton of charts, similar to what Blockworks does today, just years earlier.
That experience is very helpful now. We are one of the largest liquidity providers, so it's important to understand where the prices we use come from. That's part of what I do.
You were one of the early contributors to SEAL 911. Why is that experience important for understanding DeFi?
Igor Igamberdiev: My specialization is post-exploit research: figuring out the root cause, how something happened, what the damage is. Before SEAL 911, I posted that analysis on X. With SEAL 911, I started working directly with the affected teams.
It's helpful for the industry to have people who can quickly figure things out when there is a need. And it's helpful for me personally. It happens maybe too often, but it keeps me aware of what's going on and of how we could build better products for Armitage and Wintermute.
When you pitched Armitage, you said Wintermute's experience of market crashes, bad debt and liquidity shortages makes you a better curator. What did you mean?
Igor Igamberdiev: There are two parts. First, as a company, we went through multiple market cycles and we're still afloat and growing, which is pretty unique given how other competitors fared.
Second, we were doing things onchain before we created our curation business. We had first-hand expertise in how to safely put funds onchain and how to earn a yield on them.
In most cases, curators don't have skin in the game. They get funds from depositors and execute strategies according to a specific mandate. Of course they think about risk, or at least we expect them to. But it's not the same as when you actually put your own funds on the line.
> "In most cases, curators don't have skin in the game."
Wintermute is one of the largest liquidity providers in crypto. Why diversify into curation?
Igor Igamberdiev: Part of why we're successful is that we try to figure out what the future could look like and be prepared for any outcome. That was the case with prediction markets, tokenized stocks and compute markets. Curation is part of the same strategy.
It's hard to predict whether this is the endgame for managing capital onchain. But we clearly see more fintechs, like neobanks, starting to use vaults. So it makes sense for Wintermute to be part of it through Armitage.
Why are vaults becoming the standard way for fintechs to offer yield to their customers?
Igor Igamberdiev: These fintechs already have a user base and crypto-ready deposits. So it makes sense for them to offer services on native onchain infrastructure rather than T-bills.
If you run a TradFi fintech, you probably just buy regular T-bills, and that's your yield. To do the same in crypto, you first need to off-ramp user deposits, which adds compliance burden. Then, with T-bills, you have to manage tenor and withdrawals.
Why do that if there are already tools onchain and curators who can allocate capital? Onchain strategies can be more sophisticated and offer better yield. Depending on your users' risk profile, you can go with mid-risk or higher-risk options.
> "Why do that if there are already tools onchain and curators who can allocate capital?"
You launched with a couple of USDC vaults and now run several, including Wrapped Bitcoin. What have you learned?
Igor Igamberdiev: The main challenge is distribution. When Armitage went live, the space was already saturated, with a few big names that had secured distribution deals. In prime vaults, everyone deploys to the same blue-chip markets, so yields are roughly the same. One or two basis points of extra yield won't make people move.
So it's about finding real market opportunities. Our Pendle vault is a good example, and one of the largest on mainnet today. There was huge demand for looping PT assets but no good source of liquidity for blue-chip markets on Pendle. We sat down with the Pendle team, figured out what we could do, and built it.
Armitage handles its own liquidations instead of relying on third-party liquidators. How does that work?
Igor Igamberdiev: To be clear, it doesn't directly enhance yield. In DeFi lending, it's essential that collateral can be liquidated properly. That requires commitments from the asset issuer, the protocol or third parties like us. With new or exotic assets, you can't be sure they'll actually be liquidated unless you run your own setup.
If positions go underwater during a sharp drawdown, we can take the position on our book at a liquidation premium and sell it immediately on other venues. We've done this for years. When Morpho Blue went live, we were the top liquidator for blue chips on mainnet. Doing it for our own vaults is natural, and it unlocks new collateral types because we don't need to trust third-party liquidators or pay them a retainer.
Armitage has two USDC strategies on Railnet, Prime and Select. What drove their design?
Igor Igamberdiev: We already had working Morpho vaults, so it didn't make sense to build something completely new for stablecoins. Most funds can be allocated to our existing vaults.
But some depositors need instant liquidity guarantees. We already have high instant liquidity across our vaults, and a dedicated liquidity sleeve ensures depositors can withdraw at any time.
On the yield side, Morpho yield comes from lending against blue chips. We can add uncorrelated yield, like T-bills, to diversify default risk and smooth returns. For users who want something more advanced, we add uncorrelated yield from real-world assets.
What are the constraints for ETH and BTC strategies?
Igor Igamberdiev: BTC is tricky because lending activity is still mostly around stablecoins. You need the right wrapper assets, and to understand whether users want to loop or borrow stablecoins against BTC.
ETH is better, because native staking yield gives you a baseline, plus borrowing demand from loopers. To beat baseline ETH staking yield, you need more complex and advanced infrastructure. That's where Railnet comes in, making it possible to allocate to private credit or structured strategies.
> "That's where Railnet comes in, making it possible to allocate to private credit or structured strategies."
Why did you choose Railnet?
Igor Igamberdiev: We've known the team for a long time and have always been impressed by their work ethic and reputation. We also like the way the infrastructure is built onchain. Using Zodiac Roles to manage advanced strategies makes looping safer and more restricted, and keeps parameters compliant and secure. Zodiac offers a great balance: it unlocks generalized setups with strong guardrails.
How do you stress-test a strategy like ETH looping?
Igor Igamberdiev: Part of it is years of experience knowing which assets make sense to touch and which to avoid, like certain liquid staking tokens that carry more risk than major protocols such as Lido. We also run simulations of market scenarios. As a trading firm, we use proprietary models to evaluate how liquidity conditions change under stress.
How do you manage positions day to day? Do you rely on automated triggers or alerts?
Igor Igamberdiev: Vault curation relies heavily on infrastructure. We've built a lot internally, alongside integrations with security partners like Hypernative. We have alerts on almost every metric.
We also do deep due diligence on assets. With real-world assets it's continuous, because the off-chain components mean verifying NAV providers and asset issuers. We perform adversarial research onchain rather than just relying on questionnaires. Alerts are aggregated across our automated risk systems and escalation tools like PagerDuty, so we respond fast to risk events.
> "We perform adversarial research onchain rather than just relying on questionnaires."
Where do you see the space in two to five years?
Igor Igamberdiev: I believe it will grow significantly, much more than 10x. We see Coinbase, Robinhood and traditional institutions adopting fixed-rate loans and vault distribution. As web2 fintechs and exchanges integrate this infrastructure to offer yield to their clients, demand for advanced onchain strategies will keep growing.
When end users or fintech teams compare vaults, what should they look at beyond APY?
Igor Igamberdiev: Risk assessment shouldn't fall entirely on retail users. It's the responsibility of the distribution channel and the curator to keep risk at appropriate levels and stay transparent. Curators must be proactive about strategy changes and new assets. And thanks to blockchain transparency, anyone can verify balances and risk profiles onchain.
Will curation at Armitage be fully automated by AI agents one day?
Igor Igamberdiev: That's a tough one. AI already assists our workflow, but we're not at a point where full automation can guarantee the safety of funds. Models are progressing fast, so it's hard to predict. For now, human oversight remains critical for risk management.
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Watch the full conversation with Igor Igamberdiev on YouTube.