Wagyu

End-to-end the swap delivers native XMR on the Monero chain. Internally Wagyu routes via XMR1 on HyperCore as an intermediary, so the IOU posture only applies if you hold XMR1 (don't). Treat Wagyu as a swap, not a place to park balance: the custodial risk is bounded by how long the IOU is in flight, not the trade size.

Volume itself is real — operator publicly reports ~\$320M cumulative and ~\$30M+ recent monthly, with Wagyu functioning as a genuine XMR throughput rail in the Monero economy.

Operator alignment watch (2026-05-30). Wagyu's founder (@PerpetualCow) is, by his own words, a hype-aligned operator using XMR as instrumentation rather than a privacy-aligned operator with a Monero mission. His X bio reads verbatim: *"$HYPE maximalist. not loud about it, just patient. Contributing to @HyperliquidX and XMR through Wagyu.xyz."* In a separate post on 2026-05-29 he stated: *"Aside from $HYPE there's nothing worth owning in crypto anymore. As sad as it is."* That includes Monero — said publicly by the founder of a Monero swap. Combined with his handling of the $COW community on the adjacent Fwog.fun launchpad (promote → vampire-attack → relaunch → miss deadlines → post-hoc deny leadership → delete community Telegram on 2026-05-18), the pattern reads as textbook hype-maxi behavior.

Wagyu the swap continues to operate normally and the DPRK-pause incident (2026-04-22) was handled credibly. We are not delisting because the product is functional and the volume signals real Monero-economy demand. But: don't park balance, don't size larger than you'd be willing to absorb if the operator decides to walk, and weight the alignment mismatch in your trust posture. Grade adjusted B → B- to reflect the structural alignment mismatch. Further movement depends on Wagyu-side stress events.

Data leak (October 2026). Grade A- → C. Wagyu's order database, three months of it by the operator's own account, was published by a ransomware group after Wagyu refused to pay. Each order tied the public deposit transaction to the XMR receiving address and the user's IP, and orders users had deleted were still there. No funds were lost, but this is exactly the link people swap through Wagyu to break. Wagyu climbs back with real deletion, no IP logging and a published post-mortem. See the incident above for what to do if you used it.