With $11 billion in user deposits, the protocol has played an outsized role in popularizing curated lending vaults, which resemble funds and allow risk managers to set parameters under which users’ capital is automatically allocated to various crypto-backed markets.
Morpho said the round was co-led by Paradigm and Andreessen Horowitz (a16z)—two of crypto's largest venture capital firms—alongside Ribbit Capital. Morpho said the raise attracted strategic backing from Apollo Funds, Circle Ventures, and VanEck, with participation from over a dozen other firms.
In the announcement, Morpho noted that French banking giant Société Générale is already building on its platform, and that the protocol has ambitions of becoming “a shared credit layer that lets banks, asset managers, and fintechs” build programmable lending products.
“The true value of finance has always been held back by dated infrastructure,” Morpho co-founder Paul Frambot said in a statement. “We’re building the open credit network for the world, connecting those with excess capital to those who need financing, globally.”
As with other lending protocols, borrowers face liquidations on Morpho when their collateral drops in value and crosses a certain threshold, allowing third-party buyers to step in and buy those funds at a discount. Recently, Coinbase’s platform has seen an uptick in user losses.
