Tokenization Pioneer Centrifuge Unveils Credit Marketplace It Founded with Morpho and Coinbase

Centrifuge, which specializes in blockchain-based tokens representing real-world assets (RWAs), has built a lending market based on collateral derived from U.S. Treasury-backed tokens using lending firm Morpho’s vault system.

The marketplace for institutions will be hosted on Base, the Ethereum layer-2 network developed by crypto exchange Coinbase, and will allow collateralization and borrowing against Centrifuge’s Anemoy Liquid Treasury Fund (LTF), Midas Short-Term US Treasuries (mTBILL), and Hashnote’s US Yield Coin (USYC).

Centrifuge co-founder Lucas Vogelsang recalls that when Centrifuge was experimenting with RWA markets on the DeFi platform Aave a few years ago, the main challenge was that tokenized assets were not very liquid. Now, he emphasizes that short-term assets like Treasury bonds make the lending use case much more viable and the market is growing quite a bit.

“The RWA marketplace that Morpho is building is intended to provide utility to these tokens,” Vogelsang said in an interview. “If you’re holding a Treasury bond and you need USDC, you can have that access without having to go through a complicated process of waiting for issuers to pay you fees. So you can basically provide instant liquidity without having to use the underlying asset that you used to borrow money.”

According to the press release, Morpho Vaults will be curated by Steakhouse Financial and Re7 Labs.