Cork Joins Agglayer’s Vault Bridge to Bring Instant Liquidity to Katana and Beyond

tl;dr:‍

• Cork integrates with Agglayer’s Vault Bridge to guarantee instant withdrawals, even during market stress
• By adding a dedicated liquidity buffer in Cork Protocol, chains like Katana can offer predictable, institution-grade redemptions without sacrificing yield
• Users get confidence, LPs earn transparent yield for providing liquidity when it matters, and Agglayer moves closer to real financial infrastructure

When people move assets around crypto, they expect redemption between chains to be as smooth as entry. But on most networks, withdrawals slow down precisely when markets speed up. Liquidity dries up, queues form, and users lose confidence.

With Cork integrating Agglayer’s Vault Bridge, this dynamic changes. Agglayer-connected chains that opt-in, like Katana, can lean on a dedicated liquidity buffer so users can withdraw instantly, even during heavy market stress. 

It’s a major step toward an onchain environment that behaves like a real financial system: predictable, liquid, and built for institutions.

Vault Bridge puts idle assets to work

Vault Bridge puts assets to work on connected chains, turning idle collateral into a steady, non-inflationary revenue stream. 

But when capital is deployed efficiently, almost none of it sits unused. That means during volatile markets, if many users try to withdraw at once, available liquidity can tighten. It's the onchain version of a redemption rush.

Chains want yield. Users want redemption on demand. Historically, you had to choose.

Cork gives Vault Bridge a shock absorber

Cork adds a simple but powerful mechanism to Vault Bridge: a dedicated liquidity buffer that is always ready to meet withdrawals, instantly. Here’s how it works:

• Liquidity providers deposit stable assets into a Cork pool
• Agglayer’s Vault Bridge uses that pool to guarantee users can withdraw immediately, regardless of how much underlying collateral is currently deployed
• LPs get compensated for stepping in when liquidity is needed
• Users get what they actually care about: their assets, instantly.

Traditional finance handles redemptions for large funds in a similar way. And now this process works onchain.

Users get confidence, consistency, and liquidity on demand

This integration gives Katana, and any chain using the Vault Bridge Morpho vault, something rare in crypto: predictable assets.

Instant withdrawals

No waiting for collateral to unwind. No guessing. Whether a user is moving $50 or $5 million, they get liquidity on the spot. This liquidity buffer protects in cases of high market volatility, where withdrawals may have a short-term delay. 

Trust with volatility

When markets get noisy, liquidity often disappears. Here, liquidity is reserved for the moment it’s needed most. That stability is what asset managers, institutions, and exchanges look for before committing real flow.

Better capital efficiency across the ecosystem

Chains earn sustainable yield from Vault Bridge without sacrificing user experience. Users get fast withdrawals. LPs earn for providing a real financial service.

Everyone wins.

LPs tap yield with transparency

Cork makes room for a new type of market participant in liquidity providers who want predictable, high-quality yield backed by productive, diversified collateral.

LPs earn organic yield by providing liquidity and a risk-adjusted premium for guaranteeing redemptions when the system needs them. 

Instead of passive hope for APY, LPs take on a clear role in strengthening the ecosystem’s liquidity, reaping the words for their work.

Why Katana is the first beneficiary

Katana, a DeFi-focused L2 built on Agglayer, routes bridged assets into yield-generating strategies through Vault Bridge that fuel its incentive engine. It’s designed for deep liquidity and real yield. But deep liquidity only works if users feel safe about the availability of their assets.

Cork closes that loop.

With a guaranteed liquidity buffer, Katana becomes a high-liquidity, high-yield environment, the combination institutions actually require.

Agglayer as a foundation for onchain finance

Institutional adoption hinges on two ideas:

1. Predictability of settlement
2. Predictability of liquidity

Agglayer already delivers the first: unified state and fast finality. Cork now helps deliver the second with reliable, guaranteed redemptions. Cork’s integration ensures that Vault Bridge operates like mature financial infrastructure.

Bringing these together is what makes onchain systems usable at global scale, for exchanges, neobanks, asset issuers, and the next generation of L2s.

Agglayer’s mission is to unify all of crypto and beyond, from liquidity to users to UX.

Vault Bridge is central to this vision. Every connected chain has the option to tap into a sustainable revenue stream, something most L2s desperately lack.

But for that revenue stream to scale, it must be matched with real-world reliability. 

Chains looking to integrate Vault Bridge now have a liquidity layer built for real-world conditions. Builders launching on Agglayer can do so with stronger guarantees around user exits. LPs get a new class of yield opportunity backed by productive collateral and transparent risk.

And users get the thing they’ve asked for since the dawn of bridging, a reliable guarantee of asset redemption.