FAQ
Getting Started
What is Altitude?
Altitude is a DeFi lending protocol that lets you borrow USDC against your BTC or ETH without selling. While your loan is open, Altitude optimizes your borrow rate and generates yield with your idle capital. That yield automatically pays down your loan over time, potentially to zero.
Built on established protocols like Aave and Morpho, Altitude handles the complexity so you don't have to. One deposit, one dashboard, and your capital works while you wait.
How do I use Altitude?
Connect your wallet (MetaMask, Rabby, or other supported wallets)
Choose a vault based on your collateral type (e.g., wstETH/USDC or cbBTC/USDC)
Deposit your collateral
Borrow USDC against it
Your collateral immediately starts earning yield that reduces your loan
When you're ready to exit, repay any remaining balance and withdraw your collateral.
How much should I borrow?
If you don't plan to monitor your loan regularly, borrow at a low loan-to-value due to the volatility of crypto assets. BTC and ETH have seen days where they dropped 20-30%. Starting with a lower loan-to-value gives you more buffer against price swings.
Can I deposit and withdraw freely?
Yes. There are no lock-ups and withdrawals are instant.
For security purposes, vaults have deposit caps and a rate limiter that restricts outflows to roughly 10% of total deposits per 24 hours. This limits the impact of any potential exploit. Withdrawal limits are revised periodically.
How it works
How does my loan pay itself down?
When you borrow less than the maximum allowed, you have unused borrowing power. Altitude borrows up to a target threshold on your behalf and deploys that capital into yield-generating strategies.
For example: if the target threshold is 60% and you borrow at 20% loan-to-value, Altitude borrows an additional 40% on your behalf to generate yield. That yield is harvested regularly and automatically applied to reduce your loan balance.
You can check the current target threshold on the Transparency page in the app.
Where does Altitude borrow from and generate yield?
We only integrate with protocols after they're battle-tested. Current integrations include:
For lending: Aave and Morpho
For yield: Pendle, Curve, Morpho Earn, and Ethena
To see exactly where your assets are at any point, check the Transparency page in the app.
Why use Altitude instead of doing this myself?
You can do this yourself. The founders of Altitude used to do exactly this manually with their own funds. But doing it yourself means:
Managing liquidation risk manually. Borrowing at high LTV is risky without automated rebalancing. If the market drops 20-30% in a day and you're not watching, you get liquidated. Altitude runs multiple bots concurrently to keep vault health stable.
Staying informed on yield opportunities. To maximize returns, you need to constantly research where the best risk-adjusted yields are. Altitude does this for you.
Paying gas fees. Moving funds around on mainnet gets expensive. Altitude covers gas fees for rebalancing and yield harvesting from its revenue.
What happens if my collateral value drops?
Like any lending protocol, if your loan-to-value ratio rises above the liquidation threshold, your position may be liquidated. During liquidation, a portion of your collateral is sold to repay your debt, and a liquidation penalty applies.
Altitude's rebalancing bots help maintain healthy vault-level positions, but you're still responsible for monitoring your own LTV. If your collateral drops significantly, consider adding more or repaying part of your loan.
Altitude uses Chainlink oracles to determine collateral values.
Fees and Rewards
What fees does Altitude charge?
Altitude only charges on the upside it generates for you. There are no deposit fees, withdrawal fees, or management fees.
On the additional yield Altitude generates, there's a performance fee. You can check the exact percentage on the Transparency page in the app (typically 25%).
For example: if funds are borrowed at 5% and deployed at 10%, that's a 5% yield delta. Altitude takes 25% of that delta. You keep the remaining 75%, which goes toward paying down your loan.
How do ALTI token rewards work?
ALTI rewards are earned by block based on the amount of collateral you've deposited. Borrowing and repaying don't affect these rewards. When you deposit more or withdraw, your rewards adjust going forward (not retroactively).
You can read more about The ALTI Token and ALTI rewards program.
Security and Trust
How secure is Altitude?
Altitude employs multiple security measures:
Audited smart contracts. Two independent audit firms (Team Omega and Oxorio) have audited the protocol. See our Audits page for reports.
Rate limiting. A rate limiter controls how much can be extracted from the protocol at any time, limiting the impact of potential exploits.
Real-time threat monitoring. Hypernative's monitoring system detects suspicious activity and can trigger automated responses to protect funds.
Battle-tested foundations. Altitude is built on established protocols like Aave and Morpho with billions in TVL.
That said, DeFi carries inherent risks. Your assets can be lost due to bugs, hacks, exploits, oracle failures, or market conditions. Only deposit what you can afford to lose. See our Risks page for full details.
Who is behind Altitude?
Altitude is operated by Altitude Protocol Inc (Panama), developed by Altitude Labs and Elevation Labs. The founding team is publicly identified:
Tobias van Amstel (Founder/CEO)
Ronald van Spronsen (Founder/CTO)
Ivailo Jordanov (Founder/Advisor)
The protocol is backed by Tioga Capital, New Form Capital, GSR, and prominent DeFi angels including Marc Zeller of Aave. We've also received a grant from Aave to support ecosystem integration.
We've been building since 2021. For contact details, see our Contacts page.
Who decides which yield strategies are used?
Strategy decisions are governed through Allocation Proposals, which require approval from supply token holders. The team cannot unilaterally change which lenders or yield farms are used. See our Yield Generation Process page for details.
Technical Details
Which wallets are supported?
Altitude works with wallets you already trust, including MetaMask and Rabby.
Why is Altitude only on Ethereum?
Ethereum hosts the deepest liquidity for DeFi lending and yield generation. This gives Altitude access to competitive rates and the broadest range of yield strategies.
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