Base leads in onchain lending liquidity and USDC vault deposits

Coinbase’s Layer 2 blockchain has quietly assembled one of the most concentrated lending ecosystems in DeFi. Base now holds approximately $3.28 billion in lending total value locked, a figure that puts it in direct competition with Ethereum mainnet for dominance in onchain credit markets. The engine behind this surge is Morpho, whose deployment on Base has reached roughly $3.3 billion in TVL. That’s not a rounding error away from Ethereum’s own Morpho deployment. It’s effectively a mirror image, built on a chain that didn’t exist three years ago. The USDC gravity well USDC accounts for 84.89% of Base’s stablecoin market cap. On Base, it’s essentially a one-currency economy. That concentration has created a specific kind of lending market. Curated USDC vaults on Base hold about $1.62 billion in TVL, representing 22.5% of the global curated vault market. Only Ethereum commands a larger share. The term “curated” matters here. Unlike traditional lending pools where anyone can deposit anything, curated vaults are managed by risk curators, entities like Steakhouse Financial, who set parameters around collateral types, loan-to-value ratios, and liquidation thresholds. Coinbase’s DeFi Earn...