Crypto trading firm GSR is committing $100 million to Hare, a new onchain credit business it is building with liquidity distribution platform Turtle, as the company bets that vaults will take a larger role in how institutions put digital and tokenized assets to work.
The commitment is multi-year and will come mostly through a credit facility. GSR said its own capital will go into Hare’s products as anchor liquidity before outside investors enter.
First products will target stablecoins and tokenized gold
Hare will begin with two vault products built on lending protocol Aave. Hare USD Earn will take major dollar stablecoins in a single vault. Hare Gold Earn will allow holders of Paxos tokenized gold products PAXG and PAXGy to earn yield, with Paxos Labs partnering on the gold product.
“GSR’s commitment is deployment capital,” Hare CEO Connor Milner said in a statement to CoinDesk. “Issuers get liquidity from day one, and allocators see GSR’s own capital in the same vaults as theirs.”
Vaults are becoming a larger part of onchain finance
The model has gained traction as vaults become a core piece of onchain finance. Investors deposit assets into a smart contract, while a manager or curator decides how to deploy that capital across lending markets and other yield strategies. In practical terms, assets sitting in a wallet can be turned into collateral or a source of yield.
That setup is drawing more attention as tokenization spreads across traditional finance. More funds, commodities and other assets are moving onto blockchain rails, which is creating demand for infrastructure that can do more than hold or trade those assets. According to data from Vaults.fyi, assets across 788 curated vaults stood at $8.6 billion as of July, reaching 1.4 million.
Institutional firms are building in the same category
GSR said the new venture reflects rising institutional demand for vaults that can deploy digital and tokenized assets across lending markets and other yield-generating strategies.
Other firms have moved in as well. Crypto lender Two Prime recently launched a bitcoin lending vault on Pareto with $10 million of backing. Galaxy Digital, for its part, rolled out Galaxy Curator, a Morpho-based vault platform that gives Fireblocks’ 2,400 institutional clients access to onchain yield strategies.
Hare will focus on the credit layer
Hare said it plans to concentrate on the credit side of the market, including collateral assessment, counterparty review and how positions may behave when markets come under stress.
Milner previously served as a senior director at London-based DeFi hedge fund Re7 Capital.