Spark, a DeFi lending platform under Sky, formerly MakerDAO, has indefinitely shut down its retail-facing consumer app and is shifting to a different role: serving as the yield backend for fintech companies such as Robinhood and PayPal.
The unit, developed by Phoenix Labs, is taking a path that runs against much of the industry’s earlier playbook. Rather than building consumer apps and fighting for end users directly, Spark is leaning into infrastructure and supplying its yield and liquidity capabilities to platforms that already have large customer bases.
A B2B2C model instead of a retail app strategy
Spark’s view is that competing directly with major fintech companies for retail users makes less sense than supplying those companies with the underlying rails. Under that model, fintech platforms can offer higher returns to their own users without having to build the infrastructure themselves.
That puts Spark in a B2B2C position, operating behind brands including Robinhood and PayPal. In Robinhood’s case, its Earn vault took in $200 million in deposits within 24 days of launch. Spark’s partnership with PayPal was announced in September 2025.
Chief executive Sam MacPherson said shutting down the app was “absolutely the right decision” and said the move showed that the infrastructure model works.
Scale so far: OTC lending, Uniswap v4 liquidity, and lower revenue
The numbers cited in the report show the business has already reached meaningful scale. Spark currently has about $260 million in over-the-counter, or OTC, loans outstanding, with a goal of reaching $1 billion by the end of the year.
On Uniswap v4, Spark has moved about $150 million into liquidity pools. That accounts for roughly 30% of stablecoin trading volume on the platform.
The transition also comes with pressure. Spark’s revenue has fallen from about $80 million during the bull market to around $20 million at present.
What the shift says about how DeFi may be used
More broadly, Spark’s direction raises a clear industry question. If DeFi’s most successful form ends up being an invisible backend embedded inside fintech apps, users may not even realize they are using DeFi at all.