Curated DeFi vaults now hold $11.29 billion in total value, with five managers controlling more than two-thirds of that capital, according to a report published by vaults.fyi on August 24.

vaults.fyi and DeFiLlama have each published reports on the sector that disagree on the totals because they count vaults and protocols differently. Where the two studies see eye to eye, however, is that the curated vault market is heavily concentrated, making the role of a small group of managers important for anyone tracking where DeFi risk is actually being set.

Top curators identified by vaults.fyi

The vaults.fyi report, regarded as the widest survey of curated onchain markets so far, mapped $11.29 billion across 856 vaults, 131 curators and 18 protocols, with data current as of August 20. The results show that 69.3% of the measured market runs through just five curators.

Spreading deposits across several vaults does not spread the risk if one team runs all of them. A curator picks the markets, the collateral, the caps and the exposure limits. When five curators sit on top of two-thirds of the capital, the choices of a few people shape the risk that thousands of depositors carry.

Over the past year, the curated portion of the market climbed to 12.51% of supply-side DeFi TVL, up from 5.24%. The survey found that it expanded by 39% even as the broader supply-side market contracted by 41.8%.

Nearly half of all curated capital — about 46.2% — runs through Morpho across Ethereum-based chains and Solana, according to the report. The remaining 53.8% is split among 17 other protocols.

Morpho’s leading position comes from the system it helped build with Morpho Blue and MetaMorpho. The setup splits the basic lending function from the risk management side, allowing outside managers to create separate lending markets and package them into single vaults. That structure also helps explain why the sector has become a bridge between native crypto lenders and larger institutions that want onchain exposure without building the whole stack themselves.

That design is now attracting large traditional finance companies. Bitwise Asset Management has teamed up with Morpho to launch non-custodial vaults, with the first product aiming for a 6% yearly return. Bitwise also predicted that onchain vaults, which it calls “ETFs 2.0,” will double their assets under management in 2026.

The report further shows that across the 25 largest Morpho stablecoin vaults, which hold $3.71 billion, bitcoin backs 54.1% of the lending. A depositor who thinks they hold a USDC position may, underneath, be lending against bitcoin — exposed to its liquidity, its oracle and the market’s ability to liquidate collateral in a crash.

Has Morpho always held the top position?

Concrete and Sentora, which were not ranked twelve months ago, are now part of the current top five, with Concrete sitting fourth and Sentora second. Usual dropped from fourth all the way to thirty-fourth. The report says the reshuffle is partly due to stress, noting that after problems tied to Stream and Resolv, weaker managers were washed out and money flowed to the teams that survived.

A separate DeFiLlama study, which references Sentora data collected in July, tells the same concentration story. Using 55 tracked curators and a $7.18 billion total, it lists the top three curators as Steakhouse Financial ($2.03 billion), Sentora ($1.97 billion) and Gauntlet ($1.46 billion). Together, they control 75.9% of TVL, while the top five control 80.9%.

Traditional finance moves in

The vaults.fyi report notes that big players outside the crypto world are now getting into curated vaults. Apollo recently began working with Securitize, Midas teamed up with Fasanara, and JPMorganChase is launching tokenized money-market fund vaults. In May, trading firm Wintermute also started its own curation platform, called Armitage. Wintermute said it can accept types of collateral that other curators cannot, because it can handle liquidations on its own.

Capital has continued to flow in despite security risks. TRM Labs recorded 207 DeFi exploit incidents in the first half of 2026, more than double the 83 incidents recorded in the same period of 2025.