Centrifuge, a startup focused on blockchain-based real-world asset tokens (RWAs), has created a lending marketplace backed by multiple U.S. Treasury-backed tokens using lending firm Morpho’s vault system. The marketplace, aimed at institutions, will be hosted on Base, the Ethereum L2 network developed by crypto exchange Coinbase, and will allow collateralization and borrowing against the Centrifuge-affiliated Anemoy Liquid Treasury Fund (LTF), Midas Short Term U.S. Treasuries (mTBILL) and Hashnote’s U.S. Yield Coin (USYC).
The migration of real-world assets, especially traditional financial instruments like tokenized Treasury bills, to blockchains has become something of a trend in crypto. This is an area that Centrifuge began focusing on back in 2017. Going back just a few years, when Centrifuge was experimenting with RWA markets on the DeFi platform Aave, the problem was that these tokenized assets weren’t very liquid, recalls Lucas VOGELSANG, co-founder of Centrifuge. These days, short-term assets like Treasury bills make the lending use case much more viable, he says, and the market has also grown significantly.
Circle’s USDC is the second-largest stablecoin by market cap. The collaboration marks the first time a permissioned lending marketplace has used Coinbase Verifications, which allows a Coinbase customer to independently verify that they have been KYC’d by Coinbase in accordance with Ethereum’s proof-of-authenticity standard. Morpho Vaults will be curated by Steakhouse Financial and Re7 Labs, according to the press release.
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