The Anvil protocol

Helva’s collateral mechanics run on Anvil (anvil.xyz), a trust-minimized collateral management protocol on Ethereum mainnet. Anvil is a third-party protocol — Helva builds on it but does not control it.

What Anvil provides

• Self-custodial vaults. You deposit collateral into a vault you control.
• The Letter of Credit mechanism. You reserve collateral against a credit amount without giving up custody. See The Letter of Credit.
• Atomic conversion. When conversion is triggered, only the required amount is converted and any surplus returns to you in the same transaction.
• Permissionless liquidation of unhealthy positions, so a position can always be made safe even if any single party is offline.

Audits

Anvil has been audited by OpenZeppelin and Trail of Bits. As with any smart-contract system, undiscovered-vulnerability risk can never be fully eliminated — Helva mitigates this with strict collateral conservatism and operational safeguards. See Risks & mitigations.

What “third-party protocol” means for you

• Some protocol parameters (like collateral ratios) are set by Anvil governance, not by Helva. Helva chooses conservative configurations and monitors the protocol.
• Helva runs its own monitoring and liquidation path directly against the Anvil contracts, independent of Anvil’s own frontend — so the service doesn’t depend on a third-party UI staying online.

Note

You don’t need to understand Anvil to use Helva — but because your collateral lives in an Anvil vault, we’re transparent about the dependency. Read the honest risk view in Risks & mitigations.