Every other corner of DeFi lets the borrowing rate float. Here, ten teams are trying to nail it down for a fixed term – the niche beneath variable-rate giants like Aave and Morpho Blue. Strip away the mechanism names and they are ten bets on one hard problem: how to make a fixed rate liquid when every maturity is its own market. The last holdout shipped on 21 July 2026, when Morpho launched Midnight – and it drew ~$1.9M, which tells you more about the demand than any mechanism does. Ten live mechanisms, the whole DeFi-native field worth a few hundred million and led by borrower-credit shop Wildcat. The honest caveat: the institutional RWA tier next door is ~50× bigger, and that is where the real money already sits.
– and most of that is two names. Borrower-credit shop Wildcat (~$150M outstanding) and Liquity V2 (~$74M) are the bulk of the field. Fira looks like the leader on a ~$425M headline – until you net out the collateral it loops through itself and that number collapses to ~$5M of real on-chain value. The metric was doing the marketing. Notional once topped ~$843M and still wound down after the Nov 2025 Balancer hack; scale was never what kept anyone alive. The most-hyped name, Morpho Midnight, finally shipped in July and sits at ~$1.9M. And the institutional RWA tier next door is still ~50× bigger than all of this combined.
1 Aug 2026
DefiLlama · protocol docs
Fixed-rate, fixed-term borrowing
10 core + adjacents
The ten protocols ahead are really ten different bets on how to beat these three problems.
Floating rates are fine until someone has to budget – which is the whole reason fixed income exists in the first place. On-chain that corner is still small, but it bites exactly where variable rates hurt most: institutional treasuries, RWA financing, and rate hedging. The demand is obvious; the on-chain liquidity to serve it is the part still missing.
Same goal – a predictable cost on a 3-month loan – routed through each protocol’s native mechanism.
| Protocol | How you’d lock the 3-month rate |
|---|---|
| Term Finance | Bid in the relevant weekly sealed-bid auction; you pay the single market-clearing rate. |
| TermMax | Mint/take FT via an AMM Range Order at the 3-month market. |
| Fira | Open a position in the 3-month market; the Bond Token you mint locks the rate, and you can sell the Coupon Token for upfront yield. |
| Secured Finance | Place a limit order in the 3-month order book; you mint a tokenized zero-coupon bond (“ZC ETH…”) at the matched rate. |
| Inverse (FiRM) | Buy the required DBR at market price – that price is your locked rate. |
| Morpho Midnight | Take a standing offer – or quote your own – in the relevant fixed-term market. At launch: cbBTC/USDC on Base only, so a 3-month ETH borrow isn’t routable here yet. |
| Exactly | Lock the rate straight from the 3-month maturity pool (priced off its utilization). |
| IPOR | Keep the borrow on Aave and enter a 3-month rate swap to hedge the float. |
| Wildcat | Spin up a custom market with a 3-month term and whitelist the lenders. |
The tell: notice how differently each one discovers the rate – an auction, a bond price, an order book, a two-sided offer, a token you hold, a pool’s utilization, a swap, or simply whatever the borrower decrees. That mechanism is the whole story, and it’s the spine of the matrix on the next page.
| Protocol | Core mechanism | Fixed term | Rate set by | Collateral / risk | Status & TVL | Chains |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Morpho Midnight | Offer-based fixed-rate credit; participants quote both sides of each isolated market | Yes (fixed-maturity) | Market participants’ offers (no IRM) | Overcollateralized, isolated markets | Live 21 Jul 2026 · ~$1.9M | Base (cbBTC/USDC only at launch) |
| Term Finance | Recurring on-chain sealed-bid auctions | Yes (weekly, up to ~1yr) | Single clearing price | Per-auction, overcollateralized | Live · ~$13M | Ethereum + BNB, Avalanche, Arbitrum, Base |
| TermMax | Tokenized bonds (FT/XT/GT) + AMM “Range Orders” | Yes (maturity dates) | AMM curve pricing | Isolated positions; 1-click leverage | Live · ~$33–49M | Ethereum + 7 more (Base, BNB, Arbitrum, Berachain…) |
| Fira | Tokenized fixed-maturity bonds (BT / CT / FiraWrapped); rate by supply & demand | Yes (maturity dates) | Market supply/demand (not utilization) | Overcollateralized; isolated per-market | Live (2026) · ~$5M net TVL (large gross loan book, nets to ~$5M) | Ethereum |
| Secured Finance | On-chain order book (CLOB) for tokenized zero-coupon bonds; Itayose opening auction | Yes (quarterly maturities) | Order-book matching | Overcollateralized; also USDFC stablecoin | Live · ~$0.6M | Filecoin, Ethereum, Arbitrum, Polygon zkEVM, Avalanche |
| Inverse (FiRM) | DBR – tokenized borrowing rights for DOLA | Flexible (DBR = ~1yr units) | DBR market price | Overcollateralized DOLA | Live · ~$20M (not ~$60M) | Ethereum |
| Exactly | Fixed-rate pools + one shared variable pool | Yes (maturity dates) | Per-maturity utilization | Variable + fixed pool interaction | Live (post-2023 hack) · ~$3.8M | Optimism, Base |
| IPOR | Interest-rate swaps; now pivoting to Fusion vaults | Yes (swap durations) | AMM for interest rates | Derivative overlay on Aave / Compound | Live · IRS now legacy | Ethereum, Arbitrum |
| Wildcat | Borrower-led custom credit markets | Yes (borrower-set) | Set by borrower at creation | Permissioned lenders; undercollateralized | Live · ~$150M outstanding | Ethereum |
| Liquity V2 | Overcollateralized BOLD borrowing; borrower sets own rate | Open term (rate locked until changed) | The borrower (rate sets redemption order) | Overcollateralized (ETH / LSTs) → BOLD | Live (2024) · ~$74M | Ethereum (widely forked) |
| Takeaway | The field divides on one thing: how the rate is discovered – auction, bond price, order book, an offer, a token you hold, pool utilization, a swap, or simple borrower decree. Rank it by net TVL, the only honest cross-protocol ruler, and Wildcat (~$150M) leads with Liquity V2 (~$74M) behind it; everything else is under ~$75M. Fira shows a huge gross loan book that nets to ~$5M – the loan book is real, the on-chain float is not. Notional (~$843M) is gone after the Balancer hack. And the most-hyped name, Morpho Midnight, is finally live – at ~$1.9M on one pair on one chain, which is the most useful demand signal in this table. (Sky’s Spark lends ~$4.7B – but at a rate governance can change, so it is not a fixed term.) | |||||
Midnight is Morpho’s non-custodial protocol for fixed-rate, fixed-term credit – a separate primitive alongside Morpho Blue’s variable-rate pools, not a layer on top of them. There is no interest-rate model: lenders and borrowers quote both sides of each isolated market, and the rate is whatever the offers clear at. Rates are set by participants and are explicitly not guaranteed.
Credit risk is collateralized, not ranked – each lender holds their own overcollateralized position. Midnight removes rate and term uncertainty; it does not tranche or subordinate default risk.
Shipped 21 July 2026, but deliberately throttled: Base only, cbBTC/USDC only, a limited set of maturities. TVL is ~$1.9M – against the multi-billion Morpho network it plugs into, that is a rounding error. Auto-rolling, callbacks and a Vault adapter are roadmap, not shipped. The launch answered “does it exist”; it has not yet answered “does anyone want it.”
Term runs recurring weekly on-chain sealed-bid auctions for terms up to ~1 year. Lenders submit the rate they’ll accept and borrowers the rate they’ll pay; the auction clears at a single market-clearing rate that all matched participants receive or pay – no spread, no slippage. Loans are crypto-collateralized.
The pitch is fairness and certainty: everyone in a given auction transacts at the same transparent price.
Term is no longer Ethereum-only. It is now multi-chain – Ethereum is still ~72% of TVL, but it also runs on BNB Chain, Avalanche, Arbitrum and Base.
Status
Live with recurring auctions · ~$13M TVL.
Strip the jargon and it is the oldest trick in fixed income: sell a dollar for ninety cents today, repay a dollar at maturity – a zero-coupon bond with a wallet address. The model’s pioneer, Notional, is now in the graveyard (page 12), which tells you most of what you need: this is the most crowded corner of the field and the one that has already buried its leader. Three live attempts remain – TermMax on an AMM, Fira on supply-and-demand markets, and Secured Finance on a real order book.
A fixed-rate marketplace with maturity dates, built on tokenized instruments – FT (Fixed-rate Token, a zero-coupon bond), XT, and GT (loan-position) – priced through a custom AMM using “Range Orders.” Isolated positions, one-click leverage/looping, live on ~8 chains (Ethereum is the bulk, plus Base, BNB Chain, Arbitrum, Berachain, X Layer, Hyperliquid, BSquared).
Fira makes fixed-rate, fixed-maturity credit a native on-chain primitive, with rates discovered by supply and demand rather than a utilization curve – producing real yield curves and defined maturities. Each position is split into composable tokens: a Bond Token (principal; trades at a discount, redeems 1:1 at maturity – a zero-coupon bond), a Coupon Token (the yield, sellable upfront), and FiraWrapped collateral. Markets are isolated, each with its own collateral, loan token and risk profile. Its pitch: “Lock rates. Sell yield. Exit anytime.”
The one true on-chain central-limit order book in the set. Lenders and borrowers post limit orders for tokenized zero-coupon bonds at fixed maturities; a periodic Itayose opening auction discovers the first price, then continuous matching takes over. A filled order mints a transferable ERC-20 bond (e.g. “ZC ETH SEP2026”). It also issues the USDFC stablecoin on Filecoin and is pushing RWA integration.
Fixed-rate borrowing of the DOLA stablecoin via DBR (DOLA Borrowing Rights): 1 DBR = the right to borrow 1 DOLA for one year, depleting over time as the interest cost. Buy the DBR you need upfront and the price you pay is your locked annual rate. Duration is flexible/indefinite; overcollateralized. A yield-bearing sDOLA version also exists.
Borrow and lend at fixed rates across specific maturities. Exactly runs fixed-rate pools (one per maturity) bridged by a single shared variable-rate pool; each maturity’s rate is set by its own utilization.
Inter Protocol Over-block Rate. Rather than a standalone money market, IPOR’s original product was an interest-rate swap: a borrower already on a variable-rate platform (Aave, Compound) swaps their floating rate for a fixed one – predictability without moving collateral.
A borrower-led, undercollateralized, permissioned credit protocol. The borrower defines their own market – fixed rate, reserve ratio, withdrawal cycle, lender whitelist – and Wildcat provides the rails rather than underwriting the risk. V2 launched Feb 2026; counterparties include Wintermute, Amber and Keyrock.
Immutable, overcollateralized borrowing of the BOLD stablecoin against ETH and liquid-staking tokens – where each borrower sets their own annual interest rate. The catch: your chosen rate sets your redemption priority (the lowest-rate loans are redeemed against first), so rate-setting doubles as a continuous, market-driven defense of the peg.
Every fixed borrowing rate is implicitly priced against a risk-free benchmark. On-chain, that benchmark now exists – a ~$15B tokenized US-Treasury market yielding a blended ~3.3%, and increasingly the collateral that backs on-chain credit.
Source: rwa.xyz, 21 Jun 2026 · ~82 products, blended ~3.3% 7-day APY. In 2026 Circle’s USYC overtook BlackRock’s BUIDL as the single largest.
Ondo – OUSG (~$551M) + USDY (~$2.16B). Now building Ondo Chain and Ondo Global Markets (430+ tokenized stocks/ETFs; Franklin Templeton and MetaMask onboard) – its biggest 2026 thrust.
Superstate – USTB (~$838M, now Invesco-managed) + USCC crypto-carry (~$267M, now Bitwise). Coinbase Asset Management partnership.
OpenEden – TBILL (~$214M, reserves rated S&P AA+) + USDO stablecoin (~$33M). Backed by Ripple and Anchorage.
Why it’s here: these are not borrowing venues – they are the fixed-income floor the rest of the stack is priced against, and the collateral that increasingly backs on-chain fixed-rate credit.
The scale leader in on-chain institutional credit: RWA-focused, fixed-term, fixed-rate private credit through permissioned pools run by credit underwriters, plus the permissionless Syrup (syrupUSDC) yield token. ~$2.1B TVL across Ethereum and Solana; ~$12B cumulative loans at ~99% repayment (note the 2022 Orthogonal ~$36M default).
The flagship RWA-tranching name. Centrifuge V3 tokenizes funds and private credit as composable deRWA tokens across ~9 EVM chains (plus Solana and Stellar). Headline funds: JAAA – the Janus Henderson Anemoy AAA CLO fund (>$1B, seeded with $1B from Sky’s Grove) – and SPXA, the first licensed tokenized S&P 500 index fund. ~$1.63B TVL.
Began as uncollateralized institutional borrower pools; now repositioning around tokenized RWA credit and its own Ozean RWA L2. ~$27M TVL, now mostly on Flare – small today, an early bet on the RWA-rollup thesis rather than a scaled lender.
For an institutional or RWA builder, this tier – not the DeFi-native primitives – is where the real balance sheets sit: permissioned credit, tokenized funds, and senior/junior tranching of real-world assets, with tokenized Treasuries increasingly posted as collateral. But scale is not safety: Goldfinch, once the flagship of undercollateralized RWA credit, wound down in June 2026 after defaults across its ~$100M loan book (see the graveyard, next page). What separates Maple’s ~99% repayment record from Goldfinch’s is underwriting, not tokenization.
These create fixed / prioritized yield via senior/junior tranching rather than direct fixed-rate borrowing: Strata, Knox. For RWA tranching at scale, see Centrifuge on the previous page.
Maple, Clearpool and the tokenized-Treasury issuers now sit in the institutional / RWA frontier (pages 11–12) – that is where the real balance sheets are.
The honest take: by net TVL the DeFi-native field is Wildcat (~$150M) and Liquity V2 (~$74M), and not much else – Fira’s headline nets to ~$5M, Notional is gone, and Morpho Midnight finally shipped in July only to draw ~$1.9M. That last one is the cleanest test the field has had: the best-funded team in on-chain lending built the mechanism properly, and the volume still did not appear. The mechanisms are inventive; the demand is not here yet. The real balance sheets already moved next door, into ~$15B of tokenized Treasuries and the Maple / Centrifuge credit tier that dwarfs this whole list. So the open question isn’t whether fixed-rate borrowing matters on-chain – in TradFi it is most of credit – but what finally brings the volume: a better mechanism, clearer regulation, or institutional distribution?
core fixed-rate borrowing protocols
native field size · Wildcat leads (~$150M)
tokenized Treasuries next door
Morpho Midnight, live since 21 Jul