Yago’s SOV Loan Exits
Yago’s SOV Loans discussed here in March unfortunately have finally reached liquidation. Two days ago on August 16th, a liquidator attempted to seize and sell around 1.5 million of the 7 million SOV intended to liquidate and leave bad debt with RBTC lenders. Unfortunately this liquidator likely lost money almost immediately trying to sell into the sovryn SOV/RBTC illiquid AMM pool. As of now the collateral is bad debt and is no longer profitable for a liquidator to sell the SOV.
Here’s the total bad debt now left in the RBTC lending pool:
Borrower Loan Principal WRBTC Remaining SOV Oracle shortfall WRBTC Address linkage
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
0x8d515805a21743c2f2f33aa12a420907cbbe0fb7 839c… 3.666582472 613,652.309325 3.548852874 Main cluster
──────────────────────────────────────────── ─────── ───────────────── ────────────────── ──────────────────────── ────────────────────────────────
0x91ab7f5df554566a8cdd2cfc722d0aa031021684 eb0b… 0.386160114 1,807,617.844680 0.039367443 Main cluster
──────────────────────────────────────────── ─────── ───────────────── ────────────────── ──────────────────────── ────────────────────────────────
0x50110ef4e85a6a2e00a37d2eb30062000df07962 becb… 0.292955598 1,373,367.101118 0.029474217 Main cluster
──────────────────────────────────────────── ─────── ───────────────── ────────────────── ──────────────────────── ────────────────────────────────
0x4f3948816785e30c3378ed3b9f2de034e3ae2e97 3951… 0.255430503 1,241,139.036108 0.017317164 Main cluster
──────────────────────────────────────────── ─────── ───────────────── ────────────────── ──────────────────────── ────────────────────────────────
0xb493b1fb97f4cb2a1ea43a9ffed201e797a2c155 a499… 0.180540160 880,790.599511 0.011559905 Main cluster
──────────────────────────────────────────── ─────── ───────────────── ────────────────── ──────────────────────── ────────────────────────────────
0xb49f4a3edc04ee7052ec3b97c5895624b0087d39 eff0… 0.000913321 233.430596 0.000868537 Linked to b3a6…
──────────────────────────────────────────── ─────── ───────────────── ────────────────── ──────────────────────── ────────────────────────────────
0x9ae828decd99ac5b08ffe90b359c3ff186d4a223 c953… 0.000533190 194.771633 0.000495823 No main-cluster EOA link found
──────────────────────────────────────────── ─────── ───────────────── ────────────────── ──────────────────────── ────────────────────────────────
0xb3a6ca1c3783e06a8c5f987954bf650ea368cb1c 3a5e… 0.000485337 149.792438 0.000456600 Linked to b49f…
──────────────────────────────────────────── ─────── ───────────────── ────────────────── ──────────────────────── ────────────────────────────────
0x1e1a4c2bfcc7addb851d079c42eb314e1b237489 025e… 0.000440775 109.770360 0.000419715 No main-cluster EOA link found
──────────────────────────────────────────── ─────── ───────────────── ────────────────── ──────────────────────── ────────────────────────────────
0x265b233cd0f219dbbfbeabf119548fc24377a19c 7bd4… 0.000432068 67.469024 0.000419124 No main-cluster EOA link found
──────────────────────────────────────────── ─────── ───────────────── ────────────────── ──────────────────────── ────────────────────────────────
0x79b85fe8fdb4b78c601236b6ee46a8954e0ebaa6 78ac… 0.000370475 56.105233 0.000359711 No main-cluster EOA link found
The five-wallet main cluster accounts for:
- 4.78 WRBTC principal
- 5,916,566 SOV remaining
- 3.64 WRBTC oracle shortfall
- 99.91% of all current SOV-caused oracle bad debt
The other six wallets combined account for only 0.003019510026534132 WRBTC of oracle shortfall.
These 5 wallet addresses accounting for almost all the bad debt in the RBTC lending pool are Yago’s.
Evidence linking 0x839c… to Yago’s February borrows
Strong coordination/common-control evidence pointing to Yago:
- The four February wallets and 0x8d515… were all seeded with small RBTC amounts by the same EOA, 0xb7d16f650cb3b0754d61bdb3f6db79157ded81d8, within approximately 78 minutes on 2021-02-05.
- 0x4f394… transferred exactly 1 RBTC to 0x8d515… in transaction 0xccb9d991ce6244c882e1308f753f8f089bb37184fd70d0bd4f33f05a78d2709e.
- In June 2026, both 0x4f394… and 0x8d515… sent RBTC to the same consolidation wallet 0x206424….
- 0x8d515… and 0xb493… also both transacted with 0x78a0….
- 0x5011… and 0x91ab… sent their extracted RBTC directly to 0xb493….
The seed address 0xb7d16… is the exact address I started with back in March when I correctly identified most of Yago’s addresses using clustering techniques. I won’t fully disclose all of the evidence as I don’t want him to understand entirely how. To this day he continues to make mistakes hiding his transactions. It should concern everyone that he even attempts to by splitting actions among around one hundred addresses. That’s really not normal for someone who’s operating with good faith. I’ve literally had one main RSK address ever and a couple used for transferring in and out of rootstock. Yago goes to extensive lengths to attempt to conceal his transactions and after everything he’s done it makes sense why.
Historical use of other pools
The linked 0x8d515… address previously used the XUSD lending pool for two very large SOV positions:
Loan XUSD debt created Opening SOV position Added SOV XUSD repaid by liquidators Normal close Result
━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
c4096b3f… 112,481.072288303807037164 23,147.113320021288604009 1,303,004.96875 112,481.072288303807037164 0 Fully liquidated; exact principal repaid
─────────── ──────────────────────────── ─────────────────────────── ───────────────── ──────────────────────────── ─────────────────────── ──────────────────────────────────────────
501ef8ff… 155,770.097493898847098571 28,761.219795083622405874 1,880,263.5625 155,749.985852957473673192 20.111640941373425379 Closed with swap; exact principal repaid
So the same apparent cluster of addresses did use another lender pool, but those XUSD positions are fully closed and did not leave outstanding principal. It’s my guess this is where Yago started exiting SOV without people noticing.
Sovryn USDT0 Incentive Campaign
On-chain evidence proves that wallets holding the February loan proceeds funded the branch that created the Sovryn RBTC/USDT0 Merkl campaign.
Date On-chain action Amount
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Feb 17 iWRBTC pays native RBTC to b493… 0.316 RBTC
───────────────────────── ─────────────────────────────────────────── ───────────────────────────────────────────────
Mar 20 b493… sends RBTC to 78a0… 0.300 RBTC
───────────────────────── ─────────────────────────────────────────── ───────────────────────────────────────────────
Jun 18 78a0… returns RBTC to b493… 0.3043 RBTC
───────────────────────── ─────────────────────────────────────────── ───────────────────────────────────────────────
Jun 18 February borrower 5011… sweeps into b493… 0.4129 RBTC
───────────────────────── ─────────────────────────────────────────── ───────────────────────────────────────────────
Jun 18 February borrower 91ab… sweeps into b493… 0.39429 RBTC
───────────────────────── ─────────────────────────────────────────── ───────────────────────────────────────────────
Jul 7 b493… funds de169… 0.236 RBTC
───────────────────────── ─────────────────────────────────────────── ───────────────────────────────────────────────
Jul 13 de169… swaps RBTC to USDT0 0.2339647448577008 RBTC → 14,416.901130 USDT0
───────────────────────── ─────────────────────────────────────────── ───────────────────────────────────────────────
Jul 13, two hours later de169… creates the incentive campaign 14,416.901000 USDT0
The decisive transactions are:
1. b493… → de169…
Transaction 0x92d0…07c9 ( Rootstock transaction 0x92d0eaf21e36282f586cbe28c055a1f93a462a4c983170aef6a8d6bad49307c9 | Blockscout )
- Sender: February borrower 0xb493b1fb97f4cB2A1Ea43a9FFED201E797A2C155
- Recipient: 0xde1690480ef789BeaA112157C7D123a5C85F6Af2
- Amount: 0.236 RBTC
- Date: 2026-07-07
2. de169… swaps almost all of it into USDT0
Transaction 0x7f04…f70a ( Rootstock transaction 0x7f047bfb86f8579a5296009653e7cdfc1c79e257308ca7dc7c9ac2ea00b0f70a | Blockscout )
Local trace and receipt show:
- Native RBTC input: 0.2339647448577008
- USDT0 delivered to de169…: 14,416.901130
- USDT0 token: 0x779dED0C9e1022225F8e0630b35A9B54Be713736
3. The same wallet creates the campaign two hours later
Transaction 0xd4f7…4fef ( Rootstock transaction 0xd4f7f4941c65f6a6b2b14c83783bcfa4b146880c845ace5ea0f74af0efa84fef | Blockscout )
The decoded call is createCampaign(…) on Merkl’s DistributionCreator:
- Creator: 0xde169…
- Gross USDT0 amount: 14,416.901000
- Start: 2026-07-16
- Duration: 5,184,000 seconds — 60 days
- Campaign ID: 0xc9b053dc8b2a540cd02e27e2827e14363ce0e1bc0f371be55d505fd100f345e5
- Campaign encoding hash: 0xf611e86c87c2fe9d320466e7106bb6e95fb1e1397f0a2501799dcc39e2db0b4e
The receipt shows:
- 432.507030 USDT0 paid as the exact 3% campaign fee.
- 13,984.393970 USDT0 transferred to the Merkl Distributor.
The swap produced 14,416.901130 USDT0, while the campaign consumed 14,416.901000 USDT0—a difference of only 0.000130 USDT0.
Proof that it targeted the Sovryn RBTC/USDT0 pool
Merkl’s campaign record maps that campaign ID/encoding hash to:
- Target token: 0x591E07d721c2e22EeB4BF33D0B3377DACa886Fcc
- Target symbol: (WR)BTC/USDT0
- URL: Sovryn - DeFi for bitcoin
- Distribution setting: maximum APR of 10%
The Merkl campaign record (https://api.merkl.xyz/v4/campaigns?campaignId=0xc9b053dc8b2a540cd02e27e2827e14363ce0e1bc0f371be55d505fd100f345e5&chainId=30&withOpportunity=true)
SOV Loan Conclusion
- The February loan recipient b493… received native RBTC directly from iWRBTC.
- It and two other February borrower wallets consolidated RBTC into b493….
- b493… subsequently sent 0.236 RBTC to de169….
- de169… converted almost exactly that amount to USDT0.
- Two hours later, it used virtually the exact swap proceeds to fund the Sovryn RBTC/USDT0 incentive campaign.
RBTC Lending Pool: What Zero Recovery From the SOV Loans Would Mean for Lenders
TL;DR: The remaining SOV collateral will likely never be seized or converted to RBTC. The RBTC lending pool has approximately 4.784844 RBTC of bad debt. That equals an average loss of 16.38% of current lender claims. However, because withdrawals are not automatically pro-rata, lenders remaining after the liquid RBTC is withdrawn could face a much larger loss.
Current RBTC pool balance sheet
Snapshot: Rootstock block 9,160,886, 2026-08-18 03:12:45 UTC.
Item RBTC
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Total lender claims 29.2097288341
──────────────────────────────────────────── ───────────────
RBTC currently liquid in the pool 21.4145411043
──────────────────────────────────────────── ───────────────
Total outstanding loan principal 7.7951579657
──────────────────────────────────────────── ───────────────
Non-SOV loan principal assumed recoverable 3.0103139531
──────────────────────────────────────────── ───────────────
SOV-backed principal assumed unrecoverable 4.7848440126
There are currently 11 active SOV-backed loans, and all 11 are unsafe.
The approximately 5,917,378 SOV remaining in those loans is assigned a recovery value of zero. This is because no one is going to take the loss to liquidate this SOV.
Expected pool-wide loss
If the SOV-backed principal is written off completely:
- Total bad debt: 4.784844012619323859 RBTC
- Remaining economic value for lenders: 24.424884821514397908 RBTC
- Average recovery: 83.6190%
- Average lender loss: 16.3810%
In other words, if the loss were shared evenly:
Lender claim Estimated recovery Estimated loss
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
1 RBTC 0.836190 RBTC 0.163810 RBTC
────────────── ──────────────────── ────────────────
5 RBTC 4.180950 RBTC 0.819050 RBTC
────────────── ──────────────────── ────────────────
10 RBTC 8.361901 RBTC 1.638099 RBTC
This 16.38% is the loss under a fair, orderly, pro-rata wind-down. The lending contract does not necessarily produce that outcome automatically.
Which loans create the loss?
Loan Current principal assumed lost
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Legacy loan 0x839c… 3.6665824723 RBTC
──────────────────────────────── ────────────────────────────────
February loan 0xeb0b… 0.3861601140 RBTC
──────────────────────────────── ────────────────────────────────
February loan 0xbecb… 0.2929555976 RBTC
──────────────────────────────── ────────────────────────────────
February loan 0x3951… 0.2554305030 RBTC
──────────────────────────────── ────────────────────────────────
February loan 0xa499… 0.1805401596 RBTC
──────────────────────────────── ────────────────────────────────
Six smaller SOV loans combined 0.0031751660 RBTC
──────────────────────────────── ────────────────────────────────
Total 4.7848440126 RBTC
The five large positions all linked to Yago account for 99.93% of the assumed bad debt. And the single legacy 0x839c… position accounts for approximately 76.63% of it.
Why withdrawal timing matters
The pool currently has:
- 29.209729 RBTC in lender claims
- 21.414541 RBTC immediately liquid
- Only 73.313% of lender claims backed by immediately withdrawable RBTC
Sovryn redemptions are paid at the current accounting token price while liquidity is available. They are not automatically converted into a pro-rata haircut for every lender. Once the liquid RBTC is exhausted, additional withdrawals can fail until loans repay or more RBTC enters the pool. This creates a likely unequal outcome.
If early lenders withdraw first
If approximately 73.31% of lender claims withdraw at the current accounting price and consume the pool’s 21.414541 liquid RBTC:
- Claims remaining afterward: approximately 7.795188 RBTC
- Recoverable non-SOV loans and interest: approximately 3.010344 RBTC
- Unrecoverable SOV-backed principal: 4.784844 RBTC
The lenders still in the pool could then recover only approximately:
- 38.618% of their remaining claims
- A potential late-lender loss of 61.382%
Therefore the pool-wide economic loss is approximately 16.38%, but that does not mean every lender will personally lose 16.38%.
Early withdrawals may be paid in full while later lenders absorb a disproportionate share of the bad debt, unless the protocol recognizes and distributes the loss before liquidity is exhausted.
Damage
- 4.784844 RBTC is economically unrecoverable and almost entirely directly tied to Yago’s 5 addresses.
- The pool-wide average lender haircut is approximately 16.38%
- An orderly pro-rata recovery would return approximately 0.83619 RBTC per 1 RBTC claimed
- Because current withdrawals are liquidity-dependent rather than automatically pro-rata, lenders left after the liquid RBTC is withdrawn could face a haircut closer to 61.38%
I’m very sorry to everyone harmed by Yago, Nahrai, and Tyrone. Keep working to try to warn potential new victims and please continue reaching out to your national law enforcement and media.