Morpho’s $175M Raise Tests Onchain Credit’s Future

Investors are shifting their focus toward stablecoin and credit infrastructure rather than decentralized lending, a trend highlighted by Morpho Labs' $175 million round led by Paradigm, a16z crypto and Ribbit Capital. While known as a DeFi lending protocol, the company says it plans to become a credit infrastructure layer for banks, asset managers and fintechs.

Spark CEO Sam MacPherson said that as stablecoins scale, "credit becomes one of the most important pieces of infrastructure in the stack." Morpho shows a total value locked of $6.72 billion and about $3.47 billion in active loans per DeFiLlama, figures Sentora described as indicating "significant liquidity depth." Sentora also noted that Coinbase has used Morpho smart contracts to originate more than $2.17 billion in corporate USDC loans, suggesting the protocol is being used as lending infrastructure beyond retail DeFi.

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