Steer × Panoptic: Bringing Options Into The Issuance Studio

We’re very excited to announce Steer Protocol’s partnership with Panoptic to bring options into The Issuance Studio and unlock a new class of onchain yield products.

‍

This partnership matters because options make an asset more than just something to hold or trade. When paired with an asset, options create new ways to harvest volatility, define payoff structures, and build more resilient market offerings around that asset.

‍

For issuers, that means the ability to launch with better tools for shaping market behavior, hedging exposure, and creating more intentional investor products around their asset.

‍‍

For investors, it means access to products that do more than provide raw exposure. They can provide clearer risk frameworks, more defined payoff profiles, and better ways to manage downside and volatility.

‍

That is the deeper reason this partnership is important.

‍

Steer has been building infrastructure for asset issuance, strategy deployment, and investor access across onchain markets for years with over 4000 vaults launched and supported over 100+ asset issuers across 60 chains. With Panoptic, we are expanding that system to include options—broadening the design space for issuers and expanding the set of products investors can access through Steer.

‍

The result is not simply another integration. It is the beginning of finally unlocking what the industry has needed all along. A permissionless system where spot markets, options markets, lending, vaults, and strategies can be combined to create new structured products and new forms of onchain yield.

‍

Expanding What The Issuance Studio Can Do

The Issuance Studio is Steer’s platform for bringing assets and strategies to market onchain.

‍

Today, that includes support for spot and lending market-oriented issuance and strategy infrastructure. With Panoptic, we are extending that capability into options markets.

‍

‍

This matters because advanced yield does not emerge from a token launch alone. It depends on a deeper market stack being built underneath an asset. First comes healthy DEX liquidity and price formation. On top of that, staking and bond-style structures can help create stronger floors and protection. Lending and borrowing then add capital efficiency and expand how the asset can be used across markets. Only once those layers exist does advanced composability become durable enough to support more sophisticated products.

‍

Options are especially important in that lifecycle because they allow market participants to hedge against the volatility of an asset while also creating more expressive products around it. Instead of leaving an asset exposed to simple spot dynamics alone, options make it possible to shape outcomes more deliberately.

‍

Why This Partnership Matters

‍

Issuers want better tools to bring assets to market. Investors want more expressive yield products. Funds, treasuries, allocators, and market participants want structures that offer clearer design, more targeted exposure, and better ways to coordinate across different onchain instruments.

‍

At the same time, options remain one of the most important but underutilized primitives in DeFi. Existing alternatives often force users into incomplete choices: hold the asset outright, use perps for partial hedging, or rely on fragmented offchain structures that are harder to operationalize and harder to trust.

‍

There is also a more immediate market-access problem for issuers.

‍

Today, when a new asset comes onchain, derivative access is often shaped through closed order books, OTC relationships, or private market-making arrangements. That may work for a narrow set of counterparties, but it does not democratize access across the broader market. It limits who can participate in hedging, who can express structured views, and who can access more sophisticated risk tools around that asset.

‍

A permissionless, onchain derivatives market changes that.

‍

By bringing options onchain through Panoptic and integrating them into Steer’s Issuance Studio, we can help enable a derivative market around an asset from day 0 of its onchain launch. That means issuers are not limited to launching spot exposure first and hoping more advanced market structure develops later. They can begin with a stronger foundation for volatility management, structured participation, and broader market access from the start.

‍

That is a meaningful shift. It bridges the gap between closed, relationship-driven derivatives access and open, programmable market infrastructure that a wider set of participants can use.

What We’re Building Together

Our work with Panoptic will begin in two directions.

‍

First, Steer will launch a set of flagship vaults on top of Panoptic. These vaults will serve as initial product offerings that demonstrate how options can be integrated into investor-facing yield strategies through Steer.

‍

Second, we will work with issuers and partners to structure their own products using this expanded stack. That means moving beyond generic access and toward product environments where issuers can define the shape of investor participation more intentionally.

‍

This is important because the long-term opportunity is not just “more vaults.” It is the ability to create products where spot exposure, options exposure, and other supporting strategies work together as part of a deliberate market formation and design.

‍

Over time, this partnership will allow Steer to combine Panoptic’s options markets with other instruments we support across our platform. That opens the door to a new generation of yield products—products that are more configurable, more expressive, and better aligned with the needs of both issuers and investors.

‍

The goal is not just to make options accessible. The goal is to make options useful within a broader issuance and strategy framework.

A Better Platform for Issuers

For investors, the significance is equally important.

‍

As this stack matures, investors will gain access to a broader range of products built on top of better primitives. Instead of choosing only between spot exposure, passive LP positions, or fragmented yield opportunities, they will increasingly be able to access products that are designed with more intention around structure, yield, and exposure.

‍

That matters because options do not just add leverage or speculation. They add the ability to hedge, shape returns, and define payoff structures more precisely. In practice, that means products can be built to offer more resilience across different market conditions and more clarity around what kind of exposure an investor is taking on.

‍

Our flagship Panoptic-based vaults are an early step in that direction. They are not the end state. They are the first examples of how Steer can use options as part of a broader investor offering.

‍

That offering will continue to expand as we connect additional instruments, strategies, and issuer-specific designs into the Issuance Studio.

‍

A Better Offering for Investors

For investors, the significance is equally important.

‍

As this stack matures, investors will gain access to a broader range of products built on top of better primitives. Instead of choosing only between spot exposure, passive LP positions, or fragmented yield opportunities, they will increasingly be able to access products that are designed with more intention around structure, yield, and exposure.

‍

That matters because options do not just add leverage or speculation. They add the ability to hedge, shape returns, and define payoff structures more precisely. In practice, that means products can be built to offer more resilience across different market conditions and more clarity around what kind of exposure an investor is taking on.

‍

Our flagship Panoptic-based vaults are an early step in that direction. They are not the end state. They are the first examples of how Steer can use options as part of a broader investor offering.

‍

That offering will continue to expand as we connect additional instruments, strategies, and issuer-specific designs into the Issuance Studio.

More Than an Integration

It is important to understand this partnership for what it is.

‍

This is not simply a technical integration. It is a strategic expansion of Steer’s platform.

‍

Panoptic adds options markets to the Issuance Studio. That allows Steer to support a wider range of structured products, a wider range of issuer use cases, and a wider range of investor outcomes. It strengthens our ability to serve both sides of the market: those launching products and those allocating into them.

‍

More importantly, it expands what can be built around an asset itself.

‍

An asset paired with options is no longer limited to simple spot participation. It can support hedging. It can support structured yield. It can support more defined payoff schemes. It can support a more resilient overall market offering. And because that infrastructure is permissionless and onchain, it can be made available to a much broader market instead of remaining concentrated in closed bilateral channels.

‍

That is the real value of this partnership.

‍

We believe the next wave of onchain growth will come from platforms that do more than expose users to primitives. It will come from platforms that turn primitives into usable markets, investable strategies, and durable product ecosystems.

‍

What Comes Next

In the near term, we will be focused on bringing Panoptic into the Issuance Studio and launching our first flagship vaults on top of Panoptic.

‍

From there, we will work with issuers and partners to structure new products that combine options with Steer’s broader strategy infrastructure. Over time, we expect this to evolve into a richer ecosystem of issuer-led structured products and investor-facing yield strategies built across multiple market types.

‍

This is a meaningful step toward a more complete onchain issuance environment—one where assets do not just launch, but come to market with better structure, better investor access, better risk tooling, and more powerful financial design from day one.

‍

We’re excited to build that future with Panoptic.

‍