Steakhouse Financial announced that its High Yield USDC vault is now live on Coinbase, the first big win from the Ethena-Coinbase collaboration. The vault, curated by Steakhouse and powered by Morpho on Base, lets users lend USDC against dynamic collateral including Ethena-powered assets. A Prime vault lending against blue-chip crypto assets is also available.
The DeFi mullet comes to Coinbase
Coinbase calls this the “DeFi mullet”; it looks like a simple fintech app on the surface, but it’s actually running on smart contracts underneath. In partnership with Steakhouse Financial and Morpho, they’ve brought onchain money markets directly into the Coinbase app for everyone. You won’t need to worry about seed phrases, gas fees, or connecting a separate wallet. You just deposit USDC, and Coinbase handles the technical side by setting up a smart contract wallet that hooks into Morpho protocol. Your funds are spread across different lending markets to get the best returns, and you can watch your interest grow in real time.
This setup has been rolling out since September 2025, but the new High Yield USDC vault is the real star here. Since it’s the first to use Ethena-powered collateral, and because borrowers using these types of dynamic assets often pay a bit more for USDC, there’s a great opportunity for users to earn higher market-driven yields.
Onchain yield at scale
The real story here is not just about the tech but about getting it into people’s hands. Morpho’s lending markets have been around for a while, and Steakhouse has already managed over $1.2 billion in deposits, but mostly for decentralized finance (DeFi) experts.
By bringing this to Coinbase, onchain lending is now accessible to regular users who wouldn’t normally touch a crypto wallet. You can see the difference in the numbers: by September 2025, lending rates reached up to 10.8 percent annual percentage yield (APY), a huge jump from the usual 4.1-4.5 percent USDC rewards. Of course, the tradeoff is risk.
Prime vaults keep things safer by lending against big-name assets that are easy to trade, while High Yield vaults take on a bit more risk for those better rates. This is where Steakhouse comes in as the curator: it runs quantitative algorithms to manage lender assets and select the right collateral after risk evaluation. Their goal is to keep 90 percent of the funds working while making sure 10 percent is always ready for you to withdraw. So far, they’ve got a clean record with zero bad debt in any of their Morpho vaults.
The Ethena connection: Yield powered by USDe
This vault is the first big project to come out of the partnership between Ethena and Coinbase, which started with Coinbase Ventures picking up some ENA tokens on the open market. It’s basically a team effort: Ethena brings the assets that make money, Coinbase gets it in front of people, Steakhouse handles the risk and picks the best collateral, and Morpho provides the underlying tech. The High Yield vault is the first real proof that this whole setup actually works.
The High Yield vault includes assets powered by Ethena, specifically USDe, Ethena’s “synthetic dollar” that maintains its peg through a delta-neutral hedging strategy using perpetual futures. Borrowers using USDe or related assets as collateral typically pay a premium for USDC liquidity, which flows back to lenders as higher yield.
