Galaxy targets institutional stablecoin yield with new DeFi vaults

Galaxy Digital has started a vault curation business on the decentralized lending protocol Morpho, offering institutional clients a way to earn yield on idle stablecoin holdings without building their own DeFi operations. The product, called Galaxy Curator, is accessible through Fireblocks Earn, giving that custody platform’s more than 2,400 institutional clients curated onchain lending strategies from inside their existing treasury workflows, the company said Thursday.

The launch addresses a common complaint among big crypto holders: stablecoin balances often sit uninvested between settlements or deployments because managing DeFi risks directly is too complex. Galaxy said its vaults apply the same collateral standards and exposure limits it uses in its own lending and trading book, while letting clients keep custody at the protocol level. Transactions flow through Fireblocks’ existing approval and policy controls.

Professional vault curation has become a fast-growing corner of DeFi. Over the past year, firms including Bitwise, Wintermute and RockawayX have launched or expanded curated lending pools on Morpho. The space is attracting asset managers and trading firms racing to package institutional-grade onchain yield without the operational headache.

The competition is spreading beyond pure lending. Robinhood (HOOD), which carries an Alpha Score of 52/100, this month expanded its tokenization strategy with Robinhood Chain, adding tokenized stocks and decentralized lending. Kraken rolled out its xStocks ecosystem, letting eligible users trade tokenized U.S. equities and use them as collateral in yield-generating strategies.

“Galaxy brings years of experience navigating market cycles and building robust trading and risk management platforms directly into our Curation offering,” a company spokesperson said in emailed comments. “Institutions know exactly what they’re getting: disciplined strategy and rigorous controls around downstream risk.”

The spokesperson added that retail-facing platforms are not competitors but potential distribution partners. “Our goal is to integrate Galaxy’s vault products into both retail-facing and institutional platforms, with Fireblocks as our first of many.”

The product launches with two strategies. A Quality Vault allocates capital to blue-chip collateral markets, focusing on capital preservation. An Enhanced Vault moves into higher-yielding assets, including liquid restaking tokens and Ethena products, taking on more risk for higher returns.

Galaxy said the business draws on its broader institutional platform, which averages a $1.4 billion loan book, more than $3 billion in staked assets across five custodians, and a network of over 1,600 institutional counterparties.