Morpho：機構借貸為何要永久關掉權限？
Less Is More: Underestimated Contract Features for Institutional Adoption
- Anton Cheng Morpho
影片
影片與逐字稿來源：ETHTaipei
場次摘要
Morpho 的 Anton Cheng 說，機構採用借貸協議時，除了功能，更在意誰能改動合約。Morpho 將不可變的借貸市場與可配置的 Vault 分開；銀行與策略管理人可用兩層 Vault 分工，再永久關閉不需要的權限。他認為，能明確限制權限比不斷增加新功能更有用。
值得記下的 5 件事
- Morpho 的市場層不可變且無需許可，任何人可依抵押資產、借款資產與風險參數建立市場。
- Vault 的 curator 決定資金配置，allocator 執行指定操作；sentinel 只能撤出資產降低風險，不能加碼。
- 雙層 Vault 可讓銀行控制上層費用，再把資金導向由 DeFi 策略管理人控制的底層 Vault。
- 管理者呼叫 abdicate 可永久關閉指定功能，把雙方各自的權限固定在鏈上。
- 機構採用時，限制角色能做的事有時比增加功能更有用，因為過多權限會形成監理問題。
逐字稿
開場：機構要的合約功能，其實是限制
大家好。我是 Anton，今天的題目是 Less Is More，以及我在 Morpho 當 solutions engineer、接觸機構客戶時學到的事，從合約設計的角度看。開始吧。先自我介紹。我從 2020 年就在 DeFi，以前幫幾個 DeFi 選擇權協議做協議工程師。過去兩年在 Morpho 上做獨立前端，幾個月前加入 Morpho。So, hi everybody. My name is Anton, and today the topic of the talk is Less Is More, and what I learned as a solutions engineer at Morpho when we are trying to, like, approach institutional clients. You know, from, like, a contract design perspective. And yeah, let's get started. So, a little bit about myself. I've been in the DeFi space since 2020, and in the past I have been a protocol engineer for a few DeFi option protocols. And I've spent the last two years building an independent front end on top of Morpho until a few months ago, when I joined Morpho.
我也是前 ETHTaipei 共同主辦人，對這場研討會有任何想法都可以找我聊。今天要很快介紹 Morpho 怎麼運作、有哪些元件，再帶一個我覺得有意思的故事：我們怎麼解、又從裡面學到什麼。Morpho 現在是 EVM 上最大的借貸協議之一。合約裡鎖了大約 140 億美元，橫跨數十條網路，也有大約 50 億美元的活躍借款。And I'm also a former ETHTaipei co-host, so feel free to talk to me about anything, any idea you have that's about this conference. But basically, what I want to cover today is, like, a very brief introduction about Morpho, how things work, the different components, and I'm going to talk about, walk you through, like, a story that I found interesting and how we solve it and how we learn from the story. So, a little bit about Morpho. Morpho is now one of the biggest lending protocols on EVM. We have about $14 billion locked in the contract across dozens of networks, and we have, like, $5 billion active loans taken out.
過去兩三年最主要的整合例子是 Robinhood 與 Coinbase。你可能聽過他們提供借貸功能，底層其實是 Morpho。看右邊這張圖，可以把 Morpho 想成兩層。上面是 Morpho Vault，有很多改善介面與使用體驗的功能；下面是 Morpho Blue，也就是市場，我們可以往下看。先講市場。And the prime examples of integrations we have in the last two, three years were Robinhood and Coinbase. So you might have heard that, you know, they offer some lending or borrowing feature, and those are powered by Morpho underneath. So if you look at this diagram on the right, you can kind of imagine Morpho as a two-layer architecture, right? On the top layer, there's Morpho Vault that has lots of great features to improve the UI/UX, and underneath it's the Morpho Blue layer, which are markets, and we can dive into that. Okay, so let's talk about the markets.
市場是不可變那一層，坐在整個系統核心。真正拿著你的資金、跑借貸邏輯的也是這份合約。Morpho 上有兩千到三千個以上的市場。任何人隨時可以進來，選抵押資產、借款資產與一些風險參數，開出一個代幣對。任何人都能開市場。別人也就能來放貸賺利息，或拿抵押資產去借貸資產。因為無需許可又不可變，現在市場數以千計，市場層也沒有所有權這個概念。市場層是完全靜態的。So the markets are the immutable layer, which is sitting at the core of the whole system. That's also the contract that's holding your funds and then actually managing all the lending logic. There are more than two to three thousand markets on Morpho. Anyone can come in at any time and then create a token pair. You just have to choose a collateral asset and a loan asset and some risk parameters. So anyone can spin up any market. That means anyone else can also come here to either lend your asset to earn some interest, or to use the collateral asset as collateral to borrow the loan asset. So because of the nature of permissionlessness and immutability, we now see, you know, like thousands of markets on Morpho, and also there's no concept of ownership at the market level. So market level is, like, totally static.
Vault 是委託層：curator、allocator、sentinel
上面的 vault 層，可以想成委託或管理層。我們的假設是：沒有使用者真的會自己上鏈，管利息從哪裡來。這比較像專業工作或策略。你信任 Robinhood，或信任別人去做。很自然會把大家的資金集中，請一個我們稱為 curator 的角色，去扛流動性與風險管理，他們也可以另外收費。這是 Morpho 的高階樣子。Morpho V2 我想帶一下：不只 Morpho Blue 這種浮動利率借貸市場。And the vault layer on top, you can think of it as a delegation or management layer. So our thesis is that no user is actually going to go on-chain and manage where the interest is coming from. This is probably, like, a professional job or some strategy. You know, you trust Robinhood or you trust someone else to do it. So it's very natural to, like, pool people's funds together and then ask, like, a role, what we call curators, to do the heavy lifting of managing liquidity, managing risk, and they can also charge a fee on top. So this is kind of, like, high-level, how Morpho works. Morpho V2 is something I just want to mention briefly about: not just Morpho Blue, which is a variable-rate lending market.
Morpho 今天也提供固定利率借貸。再看 vault，右邊圖可以看到，Morpho vault 可以經由不同 adapter，把錢放進不同類型的市場：固定利率、浮動利率，也可以放進另一個 vault。積木可以這樣拼。左邊則是 Morpho vault 裡的角色。我們定義的 owner 可以設定他想要的東西，或把角色指派給基礎設施。但最重要、我標出來的，是 curator。Morpho today also offers fixed-rate lending. So a vault here, if we dive a little bit more into it, you can see on the diagram on the right, you can see a Morpho vault can go through different adapters to deposit into different types of markets, which is fixed-rate market, variable-rate market, and also it can also put money in another vault. So we can kind of, like, piece all the Legos together. And on the left, let's focus on all the roles we have in a Morpho vault. So what we define here is basically an owner who can set whatever he wants or, like, appoint roles to the infrastructure. But the most important role here is the curator, which I highlighted.
curator 決定資金去哪，想像成資產管理人那種位置。合約還設計了其他角色。例如 allocator，可以是一把能執行特定交易的金鑰。還有 sentinel，比較像守護者，幫你降風險。他們只能從 adapter 或市場把資產拉出來，不能再把錢放回去加風險。這是基本結構，也是我們想像企業會走的黃金路徑：curator 跑一個 vault，任何人存入，信任 curator 怎麼做事。And also, the curator is the one that decides where the funds go, right? So curator is basically what we imagine to be like an asset manager kind of position. And there are other roles that, you know, like, our contract designs. Like allocators, it could be like a key that can execute certain trades. Also, there's like a sentinel, which is like a guardian kind of role that helps you de-risk. So they can only pull assets out from the adapters or markets, but they cannot add risk, which is putting money back in. So these are like the basic structure, and also like the golden path of what we imagine like a business would do. Which is a curator running a vault, and anyone deposits, trusting the curator about how it does things.
問題來了。設計合約時，我們其實不太清楚大家真正會怎麼做生意。最近學到的是：接觸傳統金融時，他們很愛把事情拆開，也許找承攬商，也許找有商務合約的第三方，一起交出這個產品。以 Alice 為例。假設 Alice 有一家銀行，但她不太會跑鏈上借貸，又想把這件事當作使用者的收益來源。But here comes a problem, because when we designed the contracts, we didn't exactly know how people would actually run the business, right? So what we learned recently is that there are actually lots of... When we approach traditional finance, they love to split things up or, you know, maybe have a contractor or maybe have a third-party company that they maybe have a business agreement with to work with them together to deliver this product, right? So let's take... Think of Alice as an example. Let's imagine Alice has a bank, but she doesn't really know how to run all the on-chain lending stuff. But they want to offer this as a, you know, yield source for all the users.
雙 vault：銀行管收費，策略方管風控
Alice 想控制的是費用與變現，再跟另一個人簽約，叫他 Bob，Bob 是 DeFi 專家，負責全部風險管理。鏈上怎麼組？前面講過，Morpho vault 裡真正關鍵的角色主要是 curator。curator 握有所有財務與策略相關權限，能做的事很多。這個情境裡，我們最後是要把角色拆開。希望 Alice 能管變現與費用，也要確保實際操作 vault 的 curator Bob 改不了費用。What Alice will control is she will want to control the fee and monetization, and they will want to have another agreement with someone, let's call Bob, who's like a DeFi expert and do all the risk management. So how can we set this up on-chain, right? Because like I said before, in a Morpho vault, we only have one role, which is the curator. But curators have all the finance-related or strategy-related authority, so they have lots of power to do lots of things. What we are trying to do... Like, at the vault, in this scenario, what we are trying to do is we're eventually trying to split the role, right? We want to let Alice control maybe the monetization and the fee, but we also want to make sure Bob, which is the curator who is going to operate the vault, cannot change the fee.
直覺解法可能是再做第三層，中間包一層 wrapper 合約來處理這種邏輯。可是每次有人來要解法，你就叫他新做一份，會非常累。目前最好的做法，我們叫 fee wrapper，我比較喜歡說雙 vault 配置：開兩個 vault，其中一個讓 curator 是 Alice 的銀行。銀行就能控制所有費用，再把流動性全部導向底層那個由 Bob 控制的 vault。So a very intuitive solution you may think of is, what if we build like a third... Like a wrapper contract, something in the middle that handles this kind of logic. But this will become very, very tiresome when someone comes to you asking for a solution and you ask them to build something new. So it turns out what we have, the best solution we have so far, is what we call like a fee wrapper, or I like to refer to it as a dual-vault setup, which is we can spin up two vaults, and in one vault, we let the curator be Bank of Alice, right? So the Bank of Alice can control all the fees, and we set up the vault in a way that we direct all the liquidity to the underlying vault, which is controlled by Bob.
Bob 就能拿錢配置到市場。但又冒出新的信任假設：Alice 會不會把錢抽出來，改放進別的 vault？Bob 理論上不該收費，會不會把費用拉高，影響上層 vault 的變現？這個配置反而多出更多問題。還好 vault 上有一個很酷的功能，叫做 abdication。Morpho vault 合約上有一個函式。So Bob can take the money and then allocate to markets and everything. But here comes another problem, right? Because now we have another trust assumption, because what if Alice pulls the money out and then puts the money into another vault? Or what if Bob, who is supposed to not charge any fee, maybe like jacks up the fee and then influences the monetization on the parent vault, right? So there are more, we kind of raise more issues by this setup. But thankfully, we have a very cool feature on the vault, which is called abdication. So we have a function on the Morpho vault contract.
這個函式讓任何 owner 可以在鏈上永久關閉某項功能。呼叫之後，例如 Alice 對 adapter 相關函式呼叫 abdicate，那些函式就再也不能用。於是兩方可以在鏈上協調一套配置，各自 abdicate、關掉特定函式集合，把結構在鏈上釘死。配置完成後，兩造之間就不再需要互信。用這個結構，我們成功把符合這個情境的雙方協調起來。A function on the Morpho vault contract that is basically allowing any owner to permanently disable a certain feature on-chain. So after you call the function, let's say Alice, you call the abdicate function on the adapter-related functions, you can no longer use this function at all. So what this enables us to do is we can coordinate a setup on-chain, which these two parties they all abdicate or disable a certain set of functions, so they can kind of, like, fix the setup on-chain, right? So there will be no trust assumption between the two parties after the setup. Yeah, so with this structure, we successfully coordinate the two parties that, you know, fit the scenario.
閘門做合規，閃貸幫使用者退出 vault
再往上還有一件事，現在很常見的模式叫 gates。協議常用閘門功能，控制誰能進、誰能出。跟機構或金融科技公司談時，他們一定會抓合規：也許只有合規使用者能存進 vault。閘門可以把這件事做得很好。Alice 控制前端分發，再跟 KYC 廠商合作，規定只有完成 KYC 的使用者能存入。Another extra thing on top is that also, it's now, I think, it's a very common pattern that's called gates. So it's quite common now that protocols have this gates feature, that they can control who can enter or exit a certain protocol. What we can do now here is that it's very often that when we talk to institutions or fintech companies, they will certainly focus on compliance, right? So maybe, like, only compliant users can deposit into a vault. We can do this, like, perfectly fine with all the gates, right? So Alice, controlling the distribution in the front end, will then maybe work with a KYC owner, and then— Sorry, KYC vendor, and then say only KYC users can deposit into the vault.
跟前面的配置合在一起，會變成很自然的一對多：實體可以跨法域。例如 Alice 在台灣與日本兩個法域各有受監理交易所，就可以開兩個不同 vault，依法規接不同 KYC 廠商的閘門。資金最後都導向真正跑策略的底層 vault。這樣可以在鏈上協調很多實體與多方，不必再加合約依賴，彼此的信任假設也比較低。So if we combine this with the previous setup we have, we end up having a very, very natural setup, which is you can have multiple different, you can have one-to-many entities, maybe across jurisdictions. So, for example, maybe Alice has, like, two regulated exchanges in two different jurisdictions, Taiwan and Japan. She can then have two different vaults and then set up the gate with a different set of KYC vendors based on regulations, everything. But eventually all their funds can be routed into the underlying vault that is, like, actually running the strategy. So with this kind of setup, what we can achieve is that we can coordinate lots of different entities and lots of different parties on-chain, even without adding any contract dependency, and also just, like, lower their trust assumptions among each other.
最後一點：監理與合規上，很多協議不太想「怎麼幫人出去」。Morpho 這套基礎設施裡，vault 層是策略層，下面那層不可變、靜態。我們可以讓使用者用閃貸，把 vault 份額、vault 部位直接轉成底層市場部位。從合規看，就能給出非常清楚的兩層架構。Yeah, so one last point I want to make is that when it comes to regulatory and compliance issues, I think lots of protocols don't really consider: how can we help people get out? With the Morpho infrastructure, because we have— Remember, the vault layer is strategy, right? Like, the strategy layer, but the underneath layer is immutable and static. What we can do is we can allow users to use flash loans to, like, convert their vault share, vault position directly into, like, the underlying market position. So what would this do is that— from a compliance perspective, we can offer very, very clear two-layer architecture.
錢放進 vault，就很清楚有某種委託在發生，這類事有相對清楚的法規。第二點，抱歉，我們可以主張自我保管。使用者隨時可以撤回存取，這跟流動性綁不住。即使池子、市場沒有流動性，你還是能退出。退出之後，沒有別人能再亂動你的部位或資金。這讓我們能跟監理機關說：我們比較像中立 vault，或基礎設施提供者。這個論點後來很好用。So it's very clear that if you put money in a vault, there is some kind of delegation happening. There are some clear regulations around how to do this. This is, and also, sorry, just the second point, we can enforce self-custody. Because at any time a user can revoke the access, so it's not tied to liquidity. Even though there's no liquidity in the pool, in the market, you can still opt out. So after you opt out, no more—no one else can mess up your position or move your funds around, which is, like, a very cool feature we get to argue, like, you know, we're like a neutral vault or like an infra provider. That turns out to be, like, a good argument to regulators.
重點是你不能做什麼；現場問答
今天大致就是這些。我想帶走的是：閘門加上 abdicate 函式，我覺得是最被低估的功能。跟大型機構或其他方談，重點往往不是你能做什麼，而是你不能做什麼。有時給人、或給某個角色太多權力，落到真實世界採用就變成監理問題。有點反直覺，但限制權力，有時反而幫很大。So yeah, that's basically the topic today. I think the takeaway is gates integrated with the abdication function, which I think is the most underrated feature, because I think what I learned so far is that lots of times when we talk to big institutions or just, like, other parties, it's not about what you can do; it's about what you cannot do. Because sometimes we give people too much power, or any role too much power, but it turns out to be, like, a regulatory issue when it comes to, like, real-world adoption. So it's a little bit counterintuitive, but sometimes restricting the power can actually help us a lot.
希望這是有用的重點。好，謝謝 Anton。我們還有幾分鐘問答。有人要問嗎？你可能跟一些台灣金融機構談過，有沒有談成？他們會不會希望對資產管理人設限制，例如收益策略只能做借貸、不能質押，或對那些管理人的收益策略有其他限制？So I hope that's a good takeaway. Okay, thank you, Anton. We actually have a few minutes for the Q&A questions. So anyone has questions? So, as you may have had a conversation with some Taiwan financial institutions, was there one? Is there one? Do they want to have some restriction to those, like, asset managers, according to those, like, yield strategies? Like, those asset managers could only use, like, lending and no staking, or do they have some restriction to those asset managers' yield strategies?
他們進入 DeFi、例如 vault 這類東西的態度又是什麼？老實說，跟所有機構談的人不是我，尤其台灣目前很嚴。我們沒有那麼直接的台灣監理資訊。我猜亞洲、新加坡、日本的整體氣氛，前面其實還有一段路。很快能期待的大概只是穩定幣。借貸其實是最容易的，但包裝方式會很像信用、私募信貸基金。And what is their attitude towards entering into the... DeFi space, like vault, something like that? Yeah, honestly, I'm not the one that's talking to all the institutions, and especially Taiwan is, like, very strict currently. We don't have that much direct information about Taiwan's regulatory thing. But I guess, like, the overall sentiment that we have in Asia, Singapore, Japan, I think honestly it's, like, a far— it's a— ... It's a far road ahead of us that I think probably what we can expect very soon is just stablecoin. I think lending is actually, like, the easiest, right? But what we have to package it is, like, very similar to, you know, like, maybe like a credit, private credit fund, right?
私募信貸基金類似的地方是：把大家的錢集中，讓某些管理人、某些受監理的人把資產借給別人。目前最接近的例子就是這些私募信貸基金。就我目前所知，類似的規範大概會套用到這類角色。謝謝。謝謝。問答時間到了。謝謝 Anton。Because private credit funds is, like, similar in a way that they pool people's money. And they let some manager and some regulated people to, like, lend out the asset to someone else. So the closest example we have is those private credit funds. So probably, so far, my knowledge is that similar regulation would apply to these kinds of roles. Thank you. Thank you. That's all the time we have for the questions. So thank you, Anton.
