Zama Launches USDC Confidential Lending in Partnership with Morpho and Steakhouse Monetary

June 18, 2026

Paris, France, 18th June 2026, Chainwire

Paris, France, June 18th, 2026, Chainwire

Unlocking yield alternatives for Confidential USDC (cUSDC) holders by integrating Zama on high of Morpho and Steakhouse’s present vaults.

Zama, the quickest rising confidentiality protocol for onchain finance, immediately introduced a landmark technical partnership with Morpho and Steakhouse Monetary to launch Steakhouse Confidential USDC Prime vault, the primary DeFi yield product for confidential USDC stablecoins (cUSDC) on Ethereum. By way of this initiative, Zama delivers the underlying infrastructure to energy the confidential Steakhouse USDC Prime vault, deployed natively on Morpho’s industry-leading decentralized lending protocol.

Traditionally, institutional adoption of decentralized finance (DeFi) has been essentially stalled by the shortage of confidentiality on public blockchains. For company treasuries and asset managers, exposing transactions onchain reveals yield methods and real-time balances to rivals and front-runners, probably resulting in decrease returns. With this integration, institutional allocators, company treasuries, and energetic market members now have an answer that permits them to earn yield on their stablecoins, with out disclosing their balances and technique.

“Till now, working on a public blockchain meant exposing your complete monetary playbook to your rivals,” mentioned Dr. Rand Hindi, Co-founder and CEO of Zama. “By bringing Absolutely Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) to core monetary primitives like lending vaults, we’re proving that privateness and decentralization are now not mutually unique. This partnership with Morpho and Steakhouse Monetary marks the official launch of the Confidential DeFi class on Ethereum, a necessary paradigm shift that may lastly permit institutional capital to maneuver totally onchain.”

This integration simplifies what has traditionally been a extremely complicated cryptographic course of right into a single, seamless person journey:

Shielding property: Zama allows changing normal USDC right into a shielded cUSDC model, the place balances and switch quantities are encrypted. That is carried out on Ethereum straight, with out the necessity to bridge to a unique chain. Moreover, cUSDC comes with compliance options built-in, auditability of the shielded provide, and can be utilized with any normal EVM pockets.
Depositing in Morpho: As soon as shielded, cUSDC tokens could be deposited in present USDC Morpho vaults comparable to Steakhouse’s Prime USDC vault, and earn yield from it. This implies cUSDC deposits inherit the total safety and capital effectivity of the Morpho protocol.

“One factor that we preserve listening to from establishments is the demand for confidentiality onchain,” mentioned Merlin Egalite, Co-founder of Morpho. “Zama’s confidentiality stack constructed on high of Morpho permits establishments to allocate into Morpho Vaults identical to any allocation onchain with out compromising operational privateness.”

“The financial system is stablecoinizing quick. Allocators and company treasuries are more and more seeking to entry stablecoin-based monetary merchandise. For a lot of, the problem is visibility: public blockchains expose balances and flows to rivals and front-runners. Steakhouse USDC Prime, our oldest vault on Morpho, is designed to be extremely liquid and risk-conscious. Zama’s confidentiality layer integrates straight into that framework, permitting establishments to entry the identical technique with out broadcasting their positions. Privateness the place it’s wanted, with compliance and auditability intact”, mentioned Sébastien Derivaux, Co-founder of Steakhouse.

This preliminary vault integration serves because the blueprint for future yield merchandise focusing on varied confidential property and stablecoins, powered by Morpho.

The confidential model of the Steakhouse USDC Prime vault on Morpho will formally open for deposits on June 23, 2026 on the Zama app.

For extra info, technical documentation, or to evaluation the combination structure, customers can go to zama.org or observe @Zama on X.

About Zama

Zama is the quickest rising confidentiality protocol for onchain finance. By leveraging Absolutely Homomorphic Encryption (FHE), it allows digital property to be issued, managed, and traded privately on present public blockchains comparable to Ethereum and Solana. Based by FHE pioneer Dr. Pascal Paillier and entrepreneur Dr. Rand Hindi, Zama brings collectively one of many world’s largest groups of FHE researchers and engineers and helps a worldwide ecosystem of builders constructing confidential functions. zama.org

About Morpho

Morpho is the open credit score community with $11B+ in deposits connecting lenders and debtors to the optimum alternatives worldwide. Its modular, open infrastructure allows fintechs, wallets, exchanges, and establishments to embed configurable credit score merchandise straight into their platforms, whereas sustaining full management over the person expertise. Leaders like Coinbase, Bitwise Asset Administration, and Société Générale already construct on Morpho to deploy safe, scalable onchain credit score merchandise. For extra info, please go to Morpho.org. For extra info, customers can go to Morpho.org.

About Steakhouse Monetary

Steakhouse Monetary builds merchandise for the stablecoin financial system, with over $4.5B in TVL. Steakhouse is the market chief in threat curation of noncustodial DeFi vaults, powering earn merchandise for Coinbase, Bitget, Crypto.com, Secure, and Belief Pockets, amongst others. Steakhouse’s mission is to empower everybody with institutional-grade DeFi instruments to boost, handle and distribute the capital they should make a distinction on this planet.