It seems as though the recent crypto market crash didn't have any implications on the lending protocol whatsoever.
Morpho Labs, a decentralized finance (DeFi) lending protocol founded in 2021, has recently raised $18M in a funding round co-led by crypto-centric firm Variant and California-based VC company Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).
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According to the official announcement issued on July 12th, the Paris-based organization will leverage the fresh capital to boost decentralized lending and drive the adoption of the protocol.
The funding also saw participation from 80 other investors, advisors, and founders, including Semantic Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Cherry Crypto, Standard Crypto, Mechanism Capital, Spark Capital, Nascent, and others.
Morpho Labs, bringing secure and efficient lending services, is primarily designed to merge with other lending protocols, including Aave and Compound, to provide higher rates via P2P liquidity. In fact, Morpho-Compound already rolled out back in June, while Morpho-Aave is expected to launch by the end of this month.
Spencer Noon, general partner and investor at Variant Fund, mentioned that Morpho will eventually become one of the most prominent coordination layers of the contemporary DeFi system.
Paul Frambot, CEO of Morpho Labs, noted that the current crypto bear market doesn’t affect the lending protocol in any way possible, adding that Morpho can weather out the harsh conditions without any casualties. He concluded:
“Morpho strangely fits the bear market conditions because it's about native APY [annual percentage yield] improvements. The bear market is kind of better for us as although we might only be doing a 1% improvement of your APY, that really matters now that yields are down.”
The funding news comes a few months after a16z fired up its biggest $4.5B fund to invest in prominent Web3-driven early-stage initiatives, bringing the firm to a $7.6B valuation.
Likewise, Andreessen Horowitz also set foot in the Web3-driven gaming sector, when it debuted its $600M fund GAMES FUND ONE earlier in May.
