Curated Lending Vaults: A Growing DeFi Story
Curated lending vaults have become one of DeFi's most compelling growth stories, approaching $9 billion in total value locked. What makes this number more interesting is who controls it: just three curators, Steakhouse Financial, Sentora, and Gauntlet, manage roughly 76% of all tracked TVL in the space.
Market Leaders
Steakhouse Financial sits at the top of the leaderboard with $2.03 billion in vault capital. Sentora follows closely at $1.97 billion, with Gauntlet rounding out the trio at $1.46 billion. Together, those three curators account for approximately $5.46 billion, or 75.9% of the sector's total TVL as of July 2026.
Year-Over-Year Growth
The 51% year-over-year growth in curated vault TVL looks impressive on its own. It looks even more impressive against the backdrop of the broader DeFi lending market, which has contracted by approximately 36% over the same period.
Dominant Chains and Assets
July 2026 data pegged the total curated vault TVL at $7.18 billion, with the figure climbing toward $9 billion by mid-August. Ethereum remains the dominant chain for curated vault activity, hosting 48% of the total. Base comes in second at 22.5%. USDC alone represents 43.8% of the top 10 curators' assets, totaling $2.81 billion.
Expansion and Revenue
Sentora recently launched a new vault on the Morpho protocol in early August 2026, signaling that even market leaders are actively expanding their product lines. Revenue capture across curators varies significantly, with Sentora reportedly leading among top curators over the most recent 30-day period.
Comparison to Traditional Markets
Some in the DeFi community have drawn comparisons between the $9 billion curated vault market and the traditional collateralized loan obligation market, which manages trillions globally.