Morpho leads the $11.3 billion Select DeFi vault, with the top five managers controlling 69%

DeFi Select Treasury's total assets exceeded US$11.3 billion, with the top five managers controlling nearly 70% of the shares.

According to a report released by vaults.fyi on August 24, Curated DeFi Vaults has reached a new milestone. The total assets under management reached US$11.29 billion, and five managers alone controlled more than two-thirds of the shares.

The market is growing but highly concentrated

The analysis of vaults.fyi and DeFiLlama confirms that the selected DeFi vault sector is showing a highly concentrated trend. Although the two platforms differ in total locked value (TVL) data due to different methods of counting vaults and agreements, both sides agree that market share is concentrated in the hands of a few participants.

Data from vaults.fyi (as of August 20) shows that it has identified 131 managers in 18 agreements, managing a total of 856 vaults. The survey found that 69.3% of all selected DeFi assets were handled by only five managers. This concentration has a profound impact on risk-if most of the funds are managed by the same team, even if the funds are dispersed in different vaults, risk dispersion cannot be truly achieved. Managers are responsible for selecting markets, determining acceptable collateral, setting caps, and managing risk parameters, so the decisions of a few managers will affect the interests of thousands of depositors.

Over the past three months, the choices of these five managers have shaped the risk landscape for most of the capital in Select DeFi markets, whose portfolio now covers more than two-thirds of total assets. In the past twelve months, the share of select segments has increased from 5.24% of supply-side DeFi TVL to 12.51%. Although the entire supply-side market shrank by 41.8%, the sector expanded by 39%.

Morpho becomes market leader

Morpho, an ethereum-based decentralized lending protocol, is the leader, with a select capital share of 46.2% in support chains such as Ethereum and Solana. The remaining shares are divided among the other 17 agreements. This leadership stems from Morpho's innovative approach, particularly its Morpho Blue and MetaMorpho systems, which separate core lending functions from risk management. This architecture allows external managers to design different lending markets and encapsulate them in separate vaults.

Traditional financial institutions have also begun to enter the field of selected vaults. Bitwise Asset Management recently partnered with Morpho to launch a non-custodial vault, with a target annualized rate of return of 6%. Bitwise also predicts that online vaults (known as "ETF 2.0") will double assets under management in 2026. Among Morpho's top 25 stablecoin vaults (holding a total of $3.71 billion), Bitcoin collateral accounted for 54.1%. This structure means that even if depositors hold stablecoins such as USDC, they may be unknowingly exposed to Bitcoin's liquidity and liquidation risks.

Small Dictionary: Morpho is an open source decentralized lending protocol used to create and manage on-chain credit markets, allowing external managers to customize risks and lending terms in the vaults of multiple blockchain networks.

Changes in manager rankings and increase in institutional engagement

In the past year, the ranking of DeFi managers has changed. Concrete and Sentora, which did not appear on the list a year ago, are now ranked fourth and second respectively. Usual, which was previously ranked fourth, has dropped to 34th place. The report attributed the change to market stress events and noted that after problems with Stream and Resolv, capital was concentrated towards a stronger and more robust management team.

DeFiLlama's research based on July data also supports the centralization trend. Its data shows that the top three managers-Steakhouse Financial ($2.03 billion), Sentora ($1.97 billion) and Gauntlet ($1.46 billion)-control 75.9% of the $7.18 billion tracking TVL. The top five managers together accounted for 80.9%.

Financial giants in the non-cryptocurrency space are also increasing their participation in select vaults. Apollo teamed up with Securitize, Midas teamed up with Fasanara, and JPMorgan Chase announced the launch of a tokenized money market fund vault. In May, market maker Wintermute launched its own asset management platform, Armitage, which can handle types of collateral that other managers typically avoid because Wintermute can independently manage the clearing process.

Although security concerns persist-DeFi attacks soared to 207 in the first half of 2026, compared with 83 in the same period last year-funds continue to flow into select DeFi vaults. TRM Labs records show that the number of DeFi attacks in the first half of 2026 was more than double that in the whole of 2025, highlighting the risks that remain even as institutions 'interest in select vaults accelerates.