Bitwise’s Move Into Onchain Vaults — Interview with Jonathan Man (Bitwise) and Paul Frambot (Morpho)

Onchain expansion: On Monday, $15 billion digital asset manager Bitwise announced the launch of its first non-custodial onchain vault, built on the infrastructure of lending protocol Morpho. This marks the first time a traditional asset manager is directly entering onchain asset management.

Growing trend: Vaults have emerged as one of the fastest-growing primitives in the onchain economy. In essence, they function like traditional funds, offering yield through professionally managed strategies. The key difference is that they are non-custodial, meaning the asset manager never holds user assets, which remain in smart contracts at all times.

• Powered by Morpho: Much of the infrastructure behind today’s largest vaults is provided by Paris-based Morpho, the second-largest lending platform after Aave, with more than $6.8 billion in total value locked.

Successful case studies: Vaults are already being used by major institutions to extend their product offerings.

• Coinbase, for example, relies on vault-based structures for its lending product, enabling users to post BTC and ETH as collateral for USDC loans. Since launching early last year, the product has attracted nearly $2 billion in deposits.
• Société Générale’s blockchain subsidiary, SG-FORGE, also uses onchain vaults to support distribution and liquidity for its euro- and dollar-denominated stablecoins.

Why it matters: Bitwise’s move differs from these approaches. While Coinbase and SG-FORGE outsource vault management to third-party risk curators such as Steakhouse Financial, Bitwise plans to manage strategy and risk in-house. In doing so, it becomes the first traditional asset manager to directly enter onchain asset management.

Interview: We spoke with Jonathan Man, Bitwise’s Head of Multi-Strategy Solutions & DeFi Strategies, who will oversee the vault’s strategy, and with Paul Frambot, co-founder and CEO of Morpho, about why Bitwise is expanding into vaults, how it plans to build distribution over time, and what is still missing for vaults to reach institutional scale.

On why Bitwise decided to enter the vault curation market:

On the initial design of Bitwise’s vault and future design space:

On how Bitwise aims to drive AUM for its vaults:

On the growth outlook for vaults and the key trends shaping the market in 2026:

On what’s missing for vaults to reach institutional scale:

On the evolving role of traditional asset managers in an onchain vault ecosystem: