Welcome to another DeFi Markets Update—your no-nonsense briefing on the cryptobanking plumbing and market pulse.
Comparing USD-Denominated Vault Yields Across Morpho
Lately, more and more USD-denominated vaults are being deployed on Morpho, so we examine how Prime USDC, USDT, USDG and RLUSD vault organic rates have performed across chains.
Each vault has settled around its own typical yield, ranging from roughly 2% for RLUSD to around 4% for USDC. Overall, the Steakhouse Prime USDC on Base was the best-performing vault for the past 6 months.
Some vaults showed more rate movement at certain points due to liquidity shifts in the Morpho markets they allocate to. For example, Steakhouse Prime USDT spiked between May 30 and June 10 after a liquidity squeeze in two of its markets, wstETH/USDT and WBTC/USDT. More generally, supply moving in and out of the underlying markets while borrowing stays relatively steady also causes the smaller bumps seen across the vaults in the chart.
Furthermore, some of the other moves in yields were linked to specific events, such as the Kelp DAO exploit in April or the launch of USDG on Robinhood Chain on the first of July. Overall though, yields have been stabilising over time, with USDC on both Base and Ethereum Mainnet being the highest earners.
Steakhouse Expands Confidential Access to Five Vaults with Zama
Zama has expanded its Earn platform with confidential access to 16 Morpho vaults, using encrypted deposits, balances and withdrawals to keep individual positions private. Five of those vaults are curated by Steakhouse, bringing privacy to more of our existing Morpho strategies.
This new rollout scales from what started with Steakhouse Confidential Prime USDC that we launched with Zama in June. It was the first DeFi yield product built for confidential USDC.
The vault passed $40m in TVL within seven weeks, with its average APY of 7.2%.
The new launch also brings fresh incentives, including $100k for our Steakhouse Prime USDT vault, increasing its APY to above 6%. The vault is the same one that exists on Morpho, with $58.5m TVL, however the incentivised APY is exclusive to the Zama UI only.
The other three Steakhouse confidential vaults are High Yield USDC, High Yield USDT and tGBP. tGBP also received new incentives, lifting its APY from circa 0.05% to 3.6%.
Tether x Fasanara Launch $400m StableFund
Fasanara has teamed up with Tether to launch StableFund, an evergreen private credit fund designed to connect stablecoin liquidity directly into real-economy credit yields. It started with $400m of co-investment and is targeting up to $3bn of additional institutional capital as it scales.
StableFund invests in short-duration, asset-backed private credit across Fasanara’s lending network and USDT is built into the origination and settlement layer. Essentially, it brings USDT infrastructure into TradFi institutional lending by combining Fasanara’s underwriting with Tether’s stablecoin network to fund loans more efficiently.
Moreover, Fasanara already has its own credit DeFi exposure with Midas-issued mF-ONE and mGLO. All together, they now hold $125m across Ethereum, Base and Robinhood Chain, with Steakhouse curating lending markets for both assets.
Across these three markets, around $47m of USDC and $28m of USDG is borrowed against Fasanara credit strategies. With StableFund, Fasanara is now using USDT as part of how that credit gets funded and settled offchain too.