DeFi has become much better at helping users put capital to work. But maintaining positions afterwards often requires more work. Assets can remain stranded in old smart wallets, leveraged positions can approach liquidation while their owners are away, and protocol upgrades can leave users with positions that need to be rebuilt elsewhere.
DeFi Saver has spent years building tools around these operational problems. Its latest addition, TokenSaver, extends their product coverage from protecting active positions to recovering assets users may have forgotten entirely. They found $67M in unclaimed tokens across 87K smart wallets.
In this edition, we look at why assets become stranded in DeFi, how Token Saver recovers them, and what the product says about the next set of problems emerging around onchain asset management.
We’ve covered DeFi Saver’s fundamentals and its liquidation handling before. If you haven’t seen it, do give it a read:
A wallet address is often treated as the user’s account in DeFi, but is completely different once applications start using smart wallets. A smart wallet is a contract controlled by a user’s main wallet that can execute more complex transactions on their behalf. DeFi Saver has used this architecture for years because it allows actions such as leveraged borrowing and automated position management to be bundled into more complex transactions.
The same architecture can cause assets to end up sitting at the smart-wallet address rather than the user’s externally owned wallet. Airdrops, refunds, residual balances, or tokens sent directly to the contract remain there, even after the position that originally used the smart wallet has been closed.
DeFi Saver@DeFiSaver
How did these assets end up in a smart wallet? First of all - that likely happened a while ago, while these mentioned apps were younger and still rougher around the edges. But there's a few ways this could've happened: - The user wanted to pay back their debt, but the frontend
3:48 PM · Aug 5, 2026 · 3.14K Views
1 Reply · 9 Likes
The user may still control the contract and be entitled to the assets, but their normal wallet view does not look for it. Around $5M of UNI from the 2020 airdrop is sitting in smart wallets whose owners likely never realized that the proxy received it.
nikola_j (🛟,🛟)@_nikolajankovic
this is how we found a full 400 $UNI airdrop waiting for a certain @mzeller and 3100 other people, with close to $5m of UNI still available for claiming how come? - half of these are just the unclaimed UNI airdrops for EOAs - maybe forgotten, maybe destined never to be claimed
DeFi Saver @DeFiSaver
There's $67M+ in unclaimed tokens sitting in 87K smart wallets all across DeFi. We're talking blue chip assets, including: $ETH - $3.4M $USDT - $6.9M $sUSDS - $10M $WBTC - $6M So we built a tool that lets you claim the tokens you forgot you had: https://t.co/W897AaG6mx
4:18 PM · Aug 5, 2026 · 9.02K Views
5 Replies · 4 Reposts · 40 Likes
If you’re already a DeFi Saver user, leftover balances are one less thing to worry about. DFS already has mechanisms in place that automatically account for these and ensure they’re included in both your wallet value and shown in your portfolio.
DeFi Saver’s initial sweep found more than $67M across 87K wallets. Two of the largest balances identified were $10M of sUSDS and $6.9M of USDT. A user simply enters an address or ENS name, and the tool searches for smart wallets associated with that address, identifies recoverable balances, and allows the owner to reclaim them.
DeFi Saver@DeFiSaver
There's $67M+ in unclaimed tokens sitting in 87K smart wallets all across DeFi. We're talking blue chip assets, including: $ETH - $3.4M $USDT - $6.9M $sUSDS - $10M $WBTC - $6M So we built a tool that lets you claim the tokens you forgot you had: tokensaver.fyi
3:48 PM · Aug 5, 2026 · 90.6K Views
29 Replies · 43 Reposts · 352 Likes
The underlying chains contain the ownership information, but most wallets don’t index it. Closing a position might remove the debt and collateral assets, but it does not necessarily clean up every token that passed through the underlying smart wallet. This becomes the Token Saver’s job.
In the same month, DeFi Saver introduced 2 new tool updates: Liquidation Protection and the Aave v4 migrator. Liquidation Protection reduces the existing Auto-Repay logic to a single toggle that monitors a position around the clock and sells only enough collateral to repay part of the debt before the liquidation penalty triggers, increasing the safety ratio as a result. It is live across Aave, Morpho, Compound, Fluid, Spark, and Maker on Mainnet, Arbitrum, Optimism, and Base.
Furthermore, The Aave v4 migrator tool was introduced to allow users to move an entire V3 position to V4 in one transaction from the V3 dashboard. DFS routed roughly $1.7M of Aave V4 swap volume in July against $3.9M for V3, out of $116M total across 10,757 transactions.
Stani@StaniKulechov
First Aave V3 to V4 migrator is live, powered by @DeFiSaver. Moving positions between Aave V3 and V4 becomes seamless.
DeFi Saver @DeFiSaver
Looking to move your @aave V3 position to V4? Now you can. Migrating full positions in one transaction is now possible using our V3 to V4 migration tool. No need to manually unwind and waste time on multiple txs or ETH on gas. Available today at: https://t.co/PiMQtDiUz7
5:17 PM · Aug 4, 2026 · 15.9K Views
22 Replies · 14 Reposts · 121 Likes
DeFi positions constantly require maintenance after the user has opened them. Forgotten balances need to be recovered, leverage needs to be managed before liquidation, and positions need to be moved when the underlying protocol changes.
DeFi Saver positions itself as a powerful operational tool for DeFi lenders, helping them capture and retain value when protocols handle the mechanisms badly. It currently automates around $261M across 899 positions.
None of these tools requires users to change how they invest, but they help remove some of the work that comes after the investment. As users spread capital across more protocols and wallets, that maintenance becomes harder to manage manually, which is the problem DeFi Saver is solving.
Alea Research is engaged in a commercial relationship with DeFi Saver as part of an educational initiative, and this newsletter was commissioned as part of that engagement. This content is provided for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. You should do your own research and only invest what you can afford to lose. Alea Research is a research platform and not an investment or financial advisor.
Become a Premium member and get the full Alea platform.
Join thousands of sharp crypto investors & traders using Alea to evaluate opportunities and deploy with conviction. For just $149/month, Premium unlocks:
Full report suite: Deep Dives, Perspectives, Blueprints, Theses, Benchmarks, Memos & Pulse.
Protocol Data Rooms: Standardized due diligence portals with live analytics, risk matrices, and governance tracking across 24+ protocols.
Podcast Digest & Summit Digest: Key takeaways from the conversations shaping markets, so you don’t have to listen to every pod.
Governance Tracker: Live proposal feeds and voting activity across major protocols.
Full access to the historical research archive.
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.