Apollo Buys 9% of DeFi Protocol
Apollo acquired 9% of Morpho protocol tokens while BlackRock partnered with Uniswap and Citi tokenized trade finance on Solana, signaling institutions are moving from debate to deployment of DeFi infrastructure. Hyperliquid hit $5 billion in daily perpetual volume, exceeding Coinbase and demonstrating decentralized platforms surpassing centralized exchanges.
- Apollo Global Management's agreement with Morpho is for the acquisition of up to 90 million MORPHO tokens over a four-year period, which will represent approximately 9% of the total token supply. - The BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL) is now tradable on UniswapX, a decentralized exchange, through a partnership with the tokenization platform Securitize, which ensures compliance for institutional investors. - BlackRock has also made a strategic investment directly into the Uniswap ecosystem by purchasing an undisclosed amount of its native governance token, UNI. - Citi's project on the Solana blockchain involved the successful tokenization of a traditional trade finance instrument, a bill of exchange, which was processed end-to-end on-chain in a live environment rather than a simulation. - Hyperliquid, a decentralized perpetual futures exchange, has reportedly reached a notional trading volume of $2.6 trillion, nearly double that of Coinbase's $1.4 trillion in the same period. - Morpho Protocol, where Apollo is investing, is one of the largest decentralized lending protocols, with a total value locked of $5.8 billion, and it provides infrastructure for overcollateralized lending and borrowing. - The tokenized trade finance transaction by Citi was executed using its internal proprietary platform called CIDAP (Citi Digital Asset Platform), which supports digital issuance and asset servicing. - Hyperliquid operates on its own Layer 1 blockchain, which allows it to process up to 100,000 orders per second with zero gas fees for traders and offer up to 50x leverage on perpetual contracts.
