Last week, Morpho, the DeFi lending platform, announced a partnership with alternative asset manager Apollo Global ($738 billion in assets under management), with Apollo intending to acquire up to 90 million tokens over the next four years. This would represent approximately 16% of Morpho’s currently circulating tokens, or 9% of its maximum supply.
This partnership highlights a key structural difference between Morpho and established DeFi protocols. Morpho is similar to the much-hyped DeFi lending protocol Aave, but Morpho is more permissionless in one important way. In Aave, adding a new asset requires a governance vote for the entire protocol, which is time-consuming and not required in Morpho. The announcement states that “Apollo and Morpho will work together to support on-chain lending marketplaces on Morpho’s protocol.” They already have an indirect relationship, with a tokenized Apollo fund used in a lending pool last year.
Apollo is by no means the only traditional financial company interested in Morpho. Consumer fund administrator Apex Group recently integrated its Apex Digital 3.0 system to use its transfer agent services to support Morpho RWA loan pools, demonstrating the growth of institutional infrastructure around the platform.
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