stable coins

Story: Uniswap Earn Lets Users Put USDC, ETH and USDT Into $11.79B Morpho Network

By James Thorp

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Morpho and Gauntlet Run the Backend. Morpho handles the actual lending infrastructure. Gauntlet, the risk management firm, curates the…

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Competing With Aave and Compound. Earn puts Uniswap in direct competition with Aave and Compound, the two dominant on-chain lending…

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What It Means for the Broader DeFi Landscape. Uniswap building out lending on top of swaps fits a pattern that's been building across…

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Uniswap just moved well past swapping. The protocol launched Earn, a lending product that lets users drop USDC, USDT, and ETH directly into Morpho vaults without ever leaving the…

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The mechanics are pretty simple. One signature, and your deposit is in. The assets sit on Ethereum mainnet, routed into lending markets where borrowers pay interest back to…

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Morpho handles the actual lending infrastructure. Gauntlet, the risk management firm, curates the vaults and decides how capital gets spread across different lending markets.

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Morpho's numbers are hard to ignore. The protocol reports $11.79 billion in total deposits and $4.15 billion in active loans.

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Earn puts Uniswap in direct competition with Aave and Compound, the two dominant on-chain lending platforms that have owned that space for years.

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But the risks are real and worth spelling out. There's no FDIC insurance here. Smart contract bugs can drain vaults. Liquidity can dry up.

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Related: Tethers Net Profit Crashes to $1.5 Billion as Excess Reserves Shed Over $4 Billion

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UNI itself was sitting around $4.30 at last check, down 2.8% over 24 hours but up 12% for the week. Market cap was roughly $2.68 billion.

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So UNI holders waiting for a yield-sharing announcement probably shouldn't hold their breath yet.

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The Gauntlet curation layer is worth watching specifically. Automating deposit distribution across markets lowers the barrier for users who don't want to become lending experts,…

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Read also: Circle Wins NYDFS Trust Charter as USDC Pushes Into Regulated Finance

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Ethereum transaction fees are the other wildcard. When gas spikes, the math on small deposits breaks down fast.

The Currency Analytics

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