Fiduciary trustee

Independent legal entity that performs every action the Pipeline Team cannot perform alone.

Role

Without the Trustee’s signature, no USDC moves. Without the Trustee’s co-signature, no yield mints. Without the Trustee’s on-ramping instruction, no offtaker repayment lands as USDC.

Operational responsibilities

• Holds one cosigner share on each MPC wallet (Capital, Treasury, Withdrawal Queue)
• Second signer on every YieldAttestation alongside the Relayer
• Receives offtaker repayment wires through its correspondent account
• Instructs USD → USDC on-ramping via the Payment Agent (Circle Mint)
• Sells USYC against the Hashnote redemption rail to realise T-bill yield
• Tops up the Withdrawal Queue Wallet against the queue’s outstanding obligations
• Records loan repayments on LoanRegistry

Independence

The Trustee is operationally and beneficially independent from the Pipeline Team. It cannot act under direction of the Team in matters affecting investor assets. The 3-of-5 cosigner topology means no Team-only quorum exists — Trustee participation is required on every transfer.

Mapping to the legal stack

On the docs, “Trustee” is operational shorthand. The actual entities:

• The Trust Company — governance, custody quorum, USD account.
• Trade Company (Cayman SPC) — lender of record; receives offtaker wires; instructs on-ramping.
• Collateral Trust (BVI) — pledged collateral and enforcement.

Full hierarchy on the Legal structure page.

Why a fiduciary trustee, not a contract

Three reasons. Legal — physical-cargo trade finance requires a legal entity that signs loan documents, receives wires, holds collateral, acts in court. A contract cannot. Operational — banking rails and Hashnote redemptions require a regulated counterparty with KYC and a correspondent relationship. Architectural — splitting the lever between operating team and independent fiduciary means a bug in on-chain code cannot drain capital.