MoonPay acquires API stablecoin infrastructure platform Iron

On Thursday, decentralized lending protocol Compound launched a new series of vaults on Polygon via a partnership with web3 advisory firm Gauntlet and rival lending protocol Morpho.

Depending on one’s perspective, the move is being cast as either a way to breathe life into one of DeFi’s longest-running projects or as a complete disembowelment of Compound. Though intended for Compound to regain market share, it is seen by some as a surrender of its core technology. While the partnership could generate millions in revenue, critics argue it puts Morpho’s growth ahead of Compound’s and raises potential conflicts of interest since Gauntlet is playing a central role in both governance and execution.

Risk management firm Gauntlet proposed the controversial idea in late January. The aim was to help Compound recover lost market share from competitors like Aave, the largest lending protocol on Polygon, by teaming up with one of the fastest growing onchain credit markets in crypto.

However, the proposal is also a blow to Compound, which would theoretically profit from the arrangement, if successful, at the expense of essentially abandoning its native tech stack. Worse, Compound is paying for the honor. Both Compound DAO and Polygon are putting up $1.5 million worth of native tokens to bootstrap growth and acquire users.

Compound, launched in 2018, was one of the main catalysts of the mythical “DeFi Summer”. In 2020, founder Robert Leshner launched a governance token, COMP, and handed the reins of the protocol to the community in one of the earliest experiments with community governance.

Although an early success, Compound has lost steam. COMP trades around $40 today, down from a peak above $850 in 2021 while its total value locked is down to about $2.3 billion from a high above $12 billion. This puts it below the TVL of Morpho, a protocol launched in 2022 (the same years as Compound’s latest V3), with about $3.2 billion in assets.

“Since Compound V3 was released in August 2022 by Compound Labs, the protocol has not made meaningful updates to its tech stack,” Gauntlet wrote in its proposal. “Over the past year, Compound’s market share has declined. Compound V3’s competitiveness will be further pressured with the upcoming versions of Aave V4 and future iterations of Morpho and other protocols.”

Mutually beneficial

Under the plan, which passed with nearly 93% of the voting weight, Compound would launch four new USDC, WETH, USDT and WPOL lending vaults using the permissionless Morpho Blue infrastructure. Compound DAO owns the vaults and accrues all the revenue while Gauntlet would oversee and optimize their risk parameters. Some estimates suggest that the arrangement could generate $2 million to $3 million in revenue over the next two to three years.

The arrangement is also beneficial to Morpho, as it would give it “greater distribution” and face less competition.

It’s worth noting that the move comes shortly after Aave essentially voted to abandon its deployment on Polygon PoS. In late February, after months of community debate, Aave decided to update its parameters to incentivize users to withdraw their $300 million worth of assets from Polygon following a major fallout between the communities.

Last year, Polygon’s community shut down a proposal to repurpose bridged assets — which otherwise would remain locked — to earn yield on Morpho and Yearn vaults. Even though the idea was refused, Aave DAO considered the proposal an unacceptable breach of trust and pulled support.

Seeing a gap in the market, Gauntlet proposed that Compound and Morpho, the next largest lending protocols, partner to capture some of that volume.

At a technical level, the protocols are relatively distinct. Compound uses a monolithic, governance-heavy design with pooled liquidity markets where users deposit and borrow assets. It employs a single base asset model in V3, with interest rates. Its risk parameters — over aspects like collateral factors and liquidation specifications — are set by DAO votes.

Morpho, on the other hand, is a modular and immutable architecture that supports isolated lending markets that users can create permissionlessly. Morpho Blue matches lenders and borrowers peer-to-peer via a singleton smart contract and externalizes its risk management to curators, including Gauntlet.

Conflicts of interest?

Aside from being repositioned as a “fee-driven holding company leveraging” or glorified frontend for Morpho’s tech, some Compound supporters have called out potential conflicts of interest throughout this quasi-merger.

For one, Gauntlet was the largest voter by voting weight, when some argue it should have abstained considering it proposed the deal.

Gauntlet also has pre-existing relationships with both Compound and Morpho through involvement in their governance. While Gauntlet and Morpho will not receive revenue from the vaults, some critics have argued Gauntlet is prioritizing Morpho’s growth over Compound’s.

"If Compound itself refuses to use its own product, it raises serious concerns. Why would anyone continue to believe in the project?" as one COMP holder said.

And while Gauntlet claims no fees will be taken initially, the proposal mentions a future possibility of introducing a “fee-splitter contract” subject to Compound DAO approval. “It seems like an opportunity to make an investment into the Morpho ecosystem at the expense of Compound,” another user said.

Others have noted more indirect forms of conflict. Notably, after leaving Compound a few years ago, founder Robert Leshner delegated a large portion of his COMP tokens to Gauntlet. Additionally, Leshner founded the Robot Ventures VC firm with Gauntlet CEO Tarun Chitra.

While some have criticized the arrangement, there’s no arguing that crypto is a cutthroat industry that often has clear winners and losers. The fact that Compound has survived this long is a testament to its steadfast governance in face of a constantly evolving competitive landscape.

As Morpho CEO Paul Frambot noted, Morpho began as an “optimizer on top of Compound” before splitting off to become an independent primitive.

“Now, Compound is transitioning to build on Morpho,” Frambot said. “This move underscores the power of open financial infrastructure: projects gain a more efficient, immutable tech stack, save significant development time and costs, reduce overhead, and benefit from a shared network—all while focusing on the most value-added activities.”

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© 2025 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

New York, NY, March 13, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Somnia, the high-performance blockchain designed for fully on-chain applications, is unveiling its initial ecosystem of 14 decentralized applications (dApps) spanning DeFi, gaming, AI, social, metaverse and NFTs.

The first wave of these dApps will go live on the Somnia Testnet, beginning with Playground, a web-based metaverse experience. Over the coming weeks, additional projects will be activated, with deep dives into each initiative to showcase their capabilities and impact on the Somnia ecosystem.

A Diverse Ecosystem of High-Impact dApps

The Somnia ecosystem is built to support real-time, mass-scale decentralized applications. The launch includes:

DeFi & Cross-Chain Liquidity

• Salt – A self-custodial treasury coordination platform powered by decentralized multi-party computation (MPC). Salt is different from many other MPC wallets because key material is managed and secured using the blockchain itself making Salt wallets truly self-custodial.
• Standard – A fully on-chain central limit order book (CLOB) and perpetual exchange.

AI & Social Identity

• Sogni AI – A decentralized AI network leveraging distributed computing for high-speed image generation. Users contribute device power in "Worker Mode" to earn Sogni tokens.
• ForU AI – The Real-World AI Engine for On-Chain Communities, powering AI-DiDs that bring digital identity to life. Create, own, and tokenize AI Agents that evolve, compete, and drive real-world impact for both Web2 and Web3 communities.
• Otomata – A no-code platform for building agent-based dApps with revenue-sharing mechanics.
• LootMogul - LootMogul is an AI-powered fan-centric gaming and e-commerce platform that enables fans to create, play, and monetize their own games and merch using their favorite athletes and sports teams.

Gaming & On-Chain Virtual Worlds

• YOM – A decentralized gaming and cloud streaming platform leveraging P2P Edge (DePIN) technology, enabling AAA-quality game streaming to any device.
• Lucky Adventurer’s Gambit (Hexaplay) – A turn-based RPG featuring strategic on-chain trading mechanics and PvP combat.
• Maelstrom – A tactical naval warfare battle royale game with fantasy elements and deep customization.

Metaverse & Interoperability

• MSquared – A platform for building high-density virtual worlds with built-in interoperability, enabling users to transfer digital assets across multiple metaverses. MSquared is also enhancing developer tooling for immersive on-chain experiences, simplifying real-time blockchain interactions.
• Playground – A web-based metaverse platform for building and exploring interoperable experiences.
• Dream Builder – A 3D asset creation tool allowing users to design NFT-based avatars, objects, and worlds.
• MML – Open-source technology for building multiplayer metaverse experiences using web standards.

NFTs & Digital Ownership

• Quills – An on-chain digital collectibles project.

Building Momentum for a Fully On-Chain Future

“This is just the beginning,” said Somnia founder Paul Thomas. “With over 14 dApps already in motion across DeFi, gaming, metaverse, AI, and NFTs, Somnia is demonstrating that fully on-chain applications are not just possible—they are happening now. We are building the foundation for a scalable, decentralized ecosystem that enables high-performance applications at a level never seen before in Web3.”

As the Somnia Testnet evolves, more projects will be integrated, further expanding its ecosystem. Developers and creators interested in building high-performance, real-time applications on a fully on-chain platform are invited to explore the Testnet and contribute to the growing Somnia community.

For more information and updates, visit Somnia.Network

About Somnia

Somnia is the fastest and most cost-effective EVM Layer-1 blockchain, capable of processing over 1 million transactions per second (tps) with sub-second finality. Somnia’s new multi-stream consensus technology achieves sub-second block certainty and higher transaction throughput. Sequential execution and compression algorithms effectively handle high-density scenarios, increasing the amount of data transferred between nodes by 10-20x. The custom database IceDB achieves 15-100 nanosecond read/write times, reducing transaction costs to less than a penny. This makes Somnia an ideal platform for building large-scale, real-time applications in games, social, metaverse, finance, and other fields, serving millions of users, all on-chain, making EVM more efficient than ever before.

Disclaimer: The information provided in this press release is not a solicitation for investment, nor is it intended as investment advice, financial advice, or trading advice. It is strongly recommended you practice due diligence, including consultation with a professional financial advisor, before investing in or trading cryptocurrency and securities.

John Vibes

pr (at) somnia.network

Former Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao has denied many of the claims in a Wall Street Journal report suggesting that he has been actively seeking a federal pardon from US President Donald Trump.

In a March 13 X post following the release of the report, Zhao said he had no discussions regarding a business deal between the Trump family and Binance.US. He further denied claims that he wanted a presidential pardon from Trump, which could potentially allow him to assume an operational or management role at Binance.

“No felon would mind a pardon, especially being the only one in US history who was ever sentenced to prison for a single BSA [Bank Secrecy Act] charge,” said CZ. “Feels like the article is motivated as an attack on the President and crypto, and the residual forces of the ‘war on crypto’ from the last administration are still at work.”

Solana (SOL) price completed a “death cross” on the one-day chart on March 12, as the altcoin consolidated near its long-term support level at $125.

This could potentially accelerate the SOL price sell-off in the near term for a drop below $100 for the first time since February 2024.

Banking behemoth JPMorgan believes that the shares of Bitcoin miner IREN (IREN) could potentially surge by 70%, according to a recent report by CNBC. The stock has now been upgraded to overweight.

The stock is down by more than 33% on a year-to-date basis. It has substantially underperformed due to Bitcoin's massive price correction.

However, JPMorgan's Reginald Smith is convinced that the stock has been "overly punished." At its current price, the analyst views it as an "attractive entry."

As for some other key Bitcoin mining players, JPMorgan lowered its rating on the Cipher Mining (CIFR) stock to neutral.

JPMorgan remains bullish on CleanSpark (CLSK) and Riot Platforms (RIOT), with both of these stocks retaining their overweight ratings.

According to a recent report by JPMorgan, publicly traded Bitcoin mining companies have lost more than $20 billion over the past month.

As reported by U.Today, the banking giant remains bearish on the leading cryptocurrency after accurately predicting the massive correction.

Ethereum (ETH) is facing significant selling pressure, trading below the $1,900 mark as market uncertainty continues to weigh on price action. After losing the critical $2,000 level, ETH plunged as low as $1,750, marking its lowest point since October 2023. Bulls are now under pressure, as they must defend the current demand zone to prevent further downside and restore investor confidence.

Market conditions remain fragile, with Ethereum struggling to find strong buying interest. If bulls fail to hold current support levels, ETH could see further declines, adding to the bearish sentiment that has dominated the market in recent weeks.

On-chain data from CryptoQuant reveals that Ethereum’s Net Taker Volume remains at a low level, indicating that selling pressure is still strong. This suggests that market participants are leaning bearish, with more sell orders than buy orders dominating Ethereum’s price action.

With ETH trading in a vulnerable position, the next few days will be crucial. If bulls can stabilize the price and push ETH back above $1,900, a potential recovery could begin. However, if selling pressure persists, Ethereum may continue its downward trend, testing lower support levels in the coming weeks.

Ethereum Faces Heavy Selling Pressure

Ethereum has lost over 57% of its value, creating an extremely difficult environment for bulls as the market remains in a deep downtrend. Currently, ETH is trading below a multi-year support level, which has now turned into a strong resistance zone. As ETH struggles to break back above the $1,900–$2,000 range, the bearish trend continues, with bulls failing to regain momentum.

The entire crypto market has suffered a breakdown, mirroring weakness in the U.S. stock market, as global trade war fears and growing uncertainty surrounding U.S. President Trump’s policies shake investor confidence. Since the U.S. elections in November 2024, macroeconomic volatility and uncertainty have been the dominant forces in driving markets lower. With no clear resolution in sight, investors remain cautious, as the U.S. stock market has now reached its lowest levels since September 2024.

Top analyst Quinten Francois shared data on X, revealing that Ethereum’s Net Taker Volume is at historic lows, signaling intense selling pressure. This indicates that sellers continue to dominate the market, preventing ETH from staging any meaningful recovery. Until buyers step in with strong demand, ETH may remain stuck in a bearish phase, with further downside risk if key support levels fail.

With Ethereum struggling below critical resistance and selling pressure increasing, the next few weeks will be pivotal in determining whether ETH can stabilize or if the market will see further losses. If bulls cannot reclaim lost ground, Ethereum could face even deeper corrections in the near term.

ETH Stuck In Range As Bulls Fight to Reclaim $2,000

Ethereum is currently trading at $1,880, remaining range-bound between $1,750 and $1,950 since last Monday. This tight trading range has kept ETH in a consolidation phase, with neither bulls nor bears gaining full control over price action.

For Ethereum to start a recovery rally, bulls must push the price back above $2,000 as soon as possible. A break and close above this psychological level would indicate renewed buying momentum, allowing ETH to potentially test higher resistance levels. However, Ethereum remains in a fragile position, as selling pressure continues to weigh on the market.

If ETH fails to hold its current levels and breaks below $1,750, it could result in a steady continuation of the downtrend, with further downside risks emerging. Bears would likely target lower support zones, extending the bearish phase and delaying any chance of a sustained recovery.

With uncertainty still dominating the market, traders are closely watching whether Ethereum can break out of this range or if it will extend its decline, following the broader market’s risk-off sentiment. The next few trading sessions will be critical for ETH’s short-term direction.

Featured image from Dall-E, chart from TradingView