Compound Foundation launches institutional-only lending market

The Compound Foundation has launched a permissioned lending market exclusively for whitelisted institutional borrowers. This new market, running on Compound v3, splits the protocol’s liquidity into two distinct layers to separate institutional activity from retail users.

Whitelisted participants benefit from custom collateral sets, specific loan-to-value ratios of up to 87%, and dedicated points of contact. The market allows for lending USDC against assets including ETH, wstETH, WBTC, and cbBTC. According to the foundation, the market was oversubscribed at launch, with participation from entities such as DeFi Saver, K3/Nexo, KPK, and Yearn.

This launch is the first major output of a $52 million development program approved by the Compound DAO in August, which aims to onboard regulated financial players like banks and asset managers. The initiative includes building compliance infrastructure, such as KYC and AML tooling, to address regulatory concerns within the decentralized finance sector.