Ethereum Foundation deposited another 3,400 $ETH — worth about $7.5 million at current prices, nearly $2,220 — worth $1,000 to DeFi lending protocol Morpho $ETH According to an X post from EF today, March 18th, specifically assigned to Morpho Vaults V2.
The move follows an initial deployment in October 2025 in which EF deployed 2,400 units. $ETH (approximately $5.3 million) and approximately $6 million in stablecoins have been incorporated into the protocol, bringing the Foundation’s total commitment to Morpho to date to just under $19 million.
According to the post, the DeFi rollout is a direct expression of EF’s revamped financial policy, first announced in June 2025, which codifies a new “Defipunk” framework to guide on-chain capital allocation.
As The Defiant reported at the time, this policy signaled that DeFi was no longer a sideshow for foundations. $ETH Where is its mouth, favoring permissionless, immutable, audited protocols that align with cypherpunk values over passiveness. $ETH Sales cover operations.
EF also elaborated on why they chose to introduce Morpho, and specifically praised Morpho Vaults V2, which was released in September. The foundation cited the product’s GPL-2.0 open source license, which it noted was a deliberate choice to allow the codebase to be permanently audited and forked.
Importantly, Vaults V2’s core contract is immutable: there are no administrative keys, no upgrade mechanisms, and no emergency switches. “True cypherpunk infrastructure does not require trusting its builders and eliminates the need for it altogether,” the foundation wrote in the X announcement.
According to DefiLlama, Morpho is currently the second largest DeFi lending protocol after Aave, with a total total value locked (TVL) of over $6.9 billion. The protocol has attracted significant interest from institutional investors in recent months, including a deal by Apollo Global Management, which manages nearly $940 billion in assets, to acquire up to 9% of Morpho’s total token supply of 1 billion over four years.
EF framed morpho allocation as a problem of ecological orientation.
“What kind of DeFi ecosystem does Ethereum aim to support, and how should we weigh short-term performance against long-term resiliency and openness? Choices like licensing and architecture may seem small, but they will shape which of these paths will continue to exist over time.”
The Treasury’s move comes at a busy time for the foundation. Just last week, EF released a 38-page EF Directive, sparking debate in the community about whether foundations risk being left behind at a critical moment of institutional adoption.
In February, EF also pledged to strengthen its support for privacy-first permissionless DeFi and establish a dedicated internal unit to support builders who follow these principles. Morpho’s deposits suggest that this commitment is more than mere rhetoric.
This article was written with the help of AI Workflow. All of our stories are hand-picked, edited and fact-checked by humans.
