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Zama and Morpho Scale Confidential DeFi with 16 New Vaults and Swap Protocol

By Lauren Towner · 15 September 2026

Press Release: Zama and Morpho Scale Confidential DeFi with 16 New Vaults and Swap Protocol | Featured Image by FF News

Quick Summary

Confidential DeFi solves the visibility problem on public blockchains by using Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) to hide institutional positions and strategies. Zama and Morpho's expansion provides 16 private vaults, allowing allocators to access high-yield venues without exposing their holdings to competitors or front-runners.

How Does Zama Enable Confidential Institutional DeFi?

Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) is the core technology allowing Zama to process encrypted data without ever decrypting it. This ensures that Confidential DeFi participants can interact with public smart contracts on Ethereum while keeping their balances and strategies entirely private. By launching 16 confidential vaults, Zama provides a secure entry point for institutional treasuries that were previously sidelined by the transparency of public ledgers. These vaults include:

  • 12 Hybrid Vaults that mirror existing public strategies on Morpho.
  • 4 Exclusive Vaults designed specifically for confidential-only participants.
  • Support for five major asset classes including USDC, USDT, AUSD, and tGBP.

This infrastructure allows sophisticated capital allocators to maintain the same risk profiles and liquidity they are accustomed to, but with the added layer of onchain privacy protection.

What Are the Benefits of the Zama Swap Protocol?

The Zama Swap Protocol completes the ecosystem by allowing users to move between different confidential asset positions without revealing their intent or trade size. This creates a closed-loop environment where users can deposit, earn yield, and swap assets entirely within a confidential envelope. By removing the need to exit to public pools for rebalancing, Zama eliminates front-running risks and prevents competitors from reverse-engineering proprietary trading strategies. The protocol supports confidential versions of major stablecoins (cUSDC, cUSDT, cAUSD, cTGBP), ensuring that liquidity remains fluid across the entire confidential suite.

Which Curators Are Supporting This Confidential Expansion?

Institutional-grade curators are essential for the credibility of these private yield venues. Zama has partnered with Steakhouse Financial, Armitage by Wintermute, Flowdesk, RockawayX, and Bitwise to manage the underlying strategies. These curators ensure that Confidential DeFi vaults maintain blue-chip standards for risk management and performance. Success metrics from the initial pilot include a $40 million TVL growth in just seven weeks, proving that there is significant market demand for private onchain yield. The expansion also targets regional stablecoin adoption, such as the UK’s tGBP, providing a compliant entry point for global financial institutions.

FF NEWS TAKE:

This announcement marks the moment Confidential DeFi transitions from a niche experiment to a scalable institutional product. By integrating directly with Morpho—a protocol with over $14 billion in deposits—Zama isn't asking users to move to a new, unproven chain; it is bringing privacy to the liquidity. This is a massive needle-mover for onchain finance, finally addressing the privacy hurdles that have kept trillions in institutional capital on the sidelines.

Companies in this story: Morpho, Zama, Steakhouse Financial

People in this story: Benoit Marzouk, Merlin Egalite, Dr. Rand Hindi, Serafin Lion Engel, Evgeny Yurtaev

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