The Morpho Effect: September 2026

Curation is a high growth early-stage industry.

• Two and a half years ago it barely existed as a business. Today more than $11B sits in curated vaults.
• Coinbase and Robinhood now run their earn products on them, and each passed $500M in deposits in September.
• More than 30 curators are now active, including established names like Steakhouse Financial, Sentora, Gauntlet, and recent entrants like Galaxy Digital, Bitwise Asset Management and Armitage by Wintermute.

Underneath sit the vaults: the onchain infrastructure curators use to set risk parameters and allocation rules. A year ago we argued that vaults would become the default way to allocate liquidity onchain. That has become the consensus, and institutions are moving into the space.

But a vault has come to mean very different things, depending on the power of its curator. We think of it as a spectrum. On one end are noncustodial vaults, where the curator sets the rules but cannot change allocation without users consent or take control of user assets. On the other end are discretionary vaults, where the operator custody customer assets, and can move assets as they see fit to run more complex strategies.

Despite Morpho Vaults being designed as noncustodial, with the combination of in-kind redemptions, timelocks, role-based access controls and immutable contracts, the same open-source infrastructure could also be forked and configured to create something that looks more like a discretionary vault.

At the end of the day, there is no one size fits all. Different needs will require different vault infrastructure. The more diversity we have at the vault infrastructure layer, the more tools we have to bring all types of credit onchain.

Coinbase is the first large-scale distributor to integrate Morpho Midnight only a few months after launch, demonstrating trust in the security of the protocol. Millions of Coinbase customers can now take out fixed rateloans alongside the already successful variable rate loans powered by Morpho Blue.

An offer-based model also lets two counterparties settle a loan directly, without routing through an existing pool. That suits allocators or borrowers who want bespoke terms and speed. With P2P Orders on Morpho Midnight, a user makes an offer on their own terms, sends it to their chosen counterparty and both parties settle directly on Morpho Midnight.

P2P Orders are available on Ethereum, Base, Arc and Robinhood Chain, with support for more networks coming.

Ethereum is most neutral network with one of the deepest liquidity onchain. It brings more Midnight's fixed rate markets to users who have a mandate to allocate on Ethereum only. Midnight's crosschain expansion has just begun.

Lending directly into Morpho Blue markets has always been possible by interacting with the smart contracts or through third-party apps such as Monarch Lend.

It is now available in the Morpho App, for users who are comfortable applying their own risk expertise.

Morpho is live on Arc, Circle's Economic OS for the internet, where it powers credit use cases.

Deposits reached $220M+ on day one and topped $500M at the time of writing. Digital Asset Borrow via Circle Mint is also powered by Morpho, with close to $200M borrowed in under two weeks.

• Stock-backed loans on Coinbase Tokenized Stocks are live on Morpho Blue and Midnight
• Coinbase Lend passed $500M
• Robinhood Earn passed $500M
• Morpho on Robinhood Chain reached $1B in deposits in three months
• Zama doubles down on confidential vaults on Morpho launching 16 additional confidential vaults
• Turnkey shipped an embedded earn API powered by Morpho
• OUSD lending is coming to integrators on Tempo

• Steakhouse Financial's assets under curation have exceeded $2.3B
• Bitwise's first vault is live
• Sentora's assets under curation passed $1B, from close to zero at the start of 2026. Here is why Sentora curates on Morpho.

Total deposits passed $15B in mid-September and have exceeded $17B at the time of writing.