Wall Street went from dismissing DeFi to integrating DeFi for tokenized funds to acquiring governance stakes.
Morpho Association announced a cooperation agreement with Apollo Global Management affiliates. The deal: Apollo may acquire up to 90 million MORPHO tokens, over the next four years. This came just 48 hours after BlackRock listed its $2.1B BUIDL fund on Uniswap and purchased UNI governance tokens. [RELEASE]
This didn't happen overnight. The shift from dismissing DeFi to governing it tells you everything about where finance is heading.
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What happened
On February 13, the Morpho Association announced a cooperation agreement with Apollo Global Management affiliates. The deal: Apollo may acquire up to 90 million MORPHO tokens, 9% of total supply over a four year window. At current prices (~$1.45), the full allocation is worth approximately $112–115M.
Beyond the token purchase, both parties committed to working together to support onchain lending markets built on Morpho’s infrastructure. The onchain lending market is already $73.6B and growing. Morpho commands $5.8B of it #6 globally among DeFi protocols.
Zooming in: This is not a one-off deal. BlackRock’s BUIDL is accepted as collateral on Binance and Deribit. JPMorgan’s MONY was launched explicitly for “broader collateral usage within the blockchain ecosystem.” Apollo’s ACRED (a $130M tokenized fund of Apollo’s Diversified Credit Fund) runs the same playbook on Morpho, where investors can deposit ACRED as collateral and borrow USDC. Every major tokenized fund is being engineered to function as onchain collateral and DeFi is the only infrastructure that makes that possible at scale.
Stepping back: Institutional adoption was accelerating before the Apollo deal, with integrations spanning exchanges, asset management, banks, and servicing infrastructure as shown below.
Governance: At 9%, Apollo becomes one of the single largest governance voices in the entire protocol. In concrete terms, Apollo can influence which collateral types get listed, how risk parameters are set, and how Morpho’s DAO treasury gets deployed.
Incentives: The incentive structure is self-reinforcing. Apollo is motivated to build products on Morpho because it drives TVL, which drives fees, which drives token value and Apollo holds the token. It’s the same logic behind why a major shareholder in an exchange also becomes its highest-volume trader. The governance stake creates a structural incentive to be Morpho’s best customer.
