#29: Jeremiah Smith, OpenCover | Why 99.95% of DeFi Is Uninsured

#29: Jeremiah Smith, OpenCover | Why 99.95% of DeFi Is Uninsured

April 10, 2026 · 55 min

About this episode

Jeremiah Smith discusses the challenges and solutions in DeFi insurance with a focus on OpenCover's innovations.

Today’s guest is Jeremiah Smith, co-founder and CEO of OpenCover. Jeremiah explains why less than 0.05% of DeFi TVL is insured, walks through how OpenCover’s new “covered vaults” primitive eliminates the upfront cost and manual renewal problems that killed DeFi insurance adoption, and breaks down the Nexus Mutual underwriting stack that backs it all. Ryan and Jeremiah also discuss the Resolv USR fallout, the xUSD claims payout, and why embedded risk transfer is becoming table stakes for any product offering DeFi yield. Guest Links * Jeremiah Smith: https://twitter.com/itsJeremiahS * OpenCover: https://opencover.com * Nexus Mutual: https://nexusmutual.io Host Links * Ryan Rodenbaugh: https://twitter.com/ryanrodenbaugh * Vaults.fyi: https://vaults.fyi Subscribe and share with friends: * https://www.wallfacer.io/podcast ← Apple, YouTube, Spotify, and more! Timestamps * [00:00] Intro and OpenCover’s founding story * [03:54] The “DeFi mullet” app that preceded OpenCover * [06:40] Celsius, BlockFi, and why self-custody won * [08:29] What OpenCover does and doesn’t underwrite * [10:26] Yield compression and the challenge of scaling DeFi yield * [13:01] How much DeFi capital is actually…

People in this episode

Host: Ryan Rodenbaugh

Guest: Jeremiah Smith

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Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: OpenCover, Nexus Mutual

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