IRIS
@iris_credit
Intent based fixed-rate origination layer.
Competitive quotes, sourced across deepest lending protocols.
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Round two with Guardian, before mainnet.
Almost there.
Iris Credit has partnered with Guardian to enforce enterprise grade security on an important upcoming release.
Follow Guardian for the full report coming soon.
Part of what makes building a new primitive like IRIS interesting is watching it get pulled in different directions and boxed into different categories.
And depending on how you define it, it could become an entirely different product.
We'll share more on our own thinking soon.
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DeFi lending is already a $28.5B market.
But borrowers still can’t predict what their debt will cost.
Fixed-rate lending is trying to fix that ↓
This factor is divided into 5 different approaches
1. Intent / orderbook-based credit
Borrowers and lenders quote the rate + duration they want, then wait for a match.
@Morpho Midnight
@TenorFinance
@term_labs
@Loopscale
@rheo_xyz
@jup_offerbook
2. Tokenized fixed-maturity debt
Turn fixed-term loans into tradable maturity assets, similar to bonds or PTs.
@TermMaxFi
@Fira_Lend
@Secured_Fi
3. Fixed + variable lending
Users can choose between floating rates or a specific rate + duration.
@kamino
@ExactlyProtocol
4. Borrower-set rates
Borrowers choose their own interest rate, with different trade-offs depending on how low they set it.
@LiquityProtocol
@flexmeow
Then there are a few more unique models:
@iris_credit: solvers source liquidity from existing lending markets and manage it to keep borrowing costs predictable.
@kpk_io × @eulerfinance: curator-built fixed-rate markets anchored to benchmark yields.
@InverseFinance: tokenizes borrowing rights through DBR instead of using a fixed maturity.
@WildcatFi: fixed-rate credit for undercollateralized/private borrowers.
@aave Stable Vaults: predictable yield for depositors rather than fixed-rate borrowing.
Different models but same direction
DeFi solved instant liquidity.
The next step is making the cost of capital predictable.
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Learn how IRIS solves / get’s rid of the cold-start problem 👇🏻
One problem that is being actively solved across the fixed-rate lending stack is the cold-start problem.
You can now keep earning yield on your orders through a variable-rate pool and only commit capital once your order executes in the fixed-rate market. This removes the question of capital being "unproductive" while it is a resting order.
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Great work by @noveleader and @castle_labs mapping out the fixed-rate credit landscape.
Glad to see IRIS featured alongside @Morpho, @TenorFinance and @term_labs.
It was also helpful organizing our thoughts on what the minimal viable unit of lending market is :
"A lending market performs two jobs that are distinct. It gathers capital, decides how much of it may be at risk, and holds it (the liquidity layer). It also takes a borrower with a capital need and turns that need into a loan on stated terms (an origination layer). Strip out the liquidity layer and you have borrowers stating what they need, a party setting the terms and standing behind them, and capital drawn from somewhere else...
Origination without a liquidity layer is a lending market carrying a funding dependency. A liquidity layer without origination is a fund."
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Fixed-Rate Lending: Market Structure and Protocol Design
A report on the protocols building fixed-rate and fixed-maturity credit products.
Read the full report here:
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“The UI itself barely needs describing, which is sort of the point.”
Minimal front end is a downstream result of how IRIS was built from the ground up.
Once the loan is quoted rather than derived from a pool, there’s no curve to read, no utilization to check, no position to babysit. The screen gets short because the obligation for liability management moved to the solver layer.
A week into testnet, and the feedback’s been great. Worth a read 🔽
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Played around on the @iris_credit testnet over the weekend. Ran a few loans across the three live markets.
The UI itself barely needs describing, which is sort of the point.
> You state what you need.
> Collateral, size, how long, the highest rate you'll accept.
> A quote comes back with a countdown.
> Take it or don't.
The maturity field is fully customizable. I wanted 4 days, so I entered 4 days. No limited dropdown, nothing rounding me into someone else's calendar.
What runs underneath is the more interesting part to me.
> You're not matched against a lender.
> You sign an intent, and solvers compete off-chain to underwrite it.
> The winner puts up its own capital as a guarantee, opens your loan as a normal variable position on whichever venue is cheapest right then, and hands you a fixed rate on top.
Then it keeps working. As rates move, the solver can shift that position across venues chasing cheaper funding.
Your rate never moves. Theirs does. If the real funding cost lands below your quote, that gap is their profit. If it runs above, their own capital eats the difference.
So the fixed rate isn't an asset sitting in a pool somewhere. It's a promise backed by capital, with a variable position underneath doing the work.
Which is exactly how a bank treasury desk operates.
> A bank issuing you a 10-year fixed mortgage doesn't go find a matching 10-year fixed deposit.
> It funds you with whatever's cheapest, rolls it, hedges what's left over, and manages that funding stack for the life of your loan.
> You see one rate. They run the machine behind it.
IRIS turns that into a competitive auction instead of something one bank keeps in-house. Treasury skill has always been a private moat. That part actually feels new to me.
Zoom out and @0xCheeezzyyyy's recent money stack framing seems pretty clean way to place this imo. M0 is capital entering. M1 is wrapping it so it circulates. M2 is credit, where capital gets amplified. Fixed-term credit sits right at the frontier of that top layer.
And within it, fixed rate is really two different products.
> Some borrowers need a date. The loan has to mature the day their obligation does. RWA funds, token unlocks, anything with dated liabilities.
> Others just need the rate to stop moving and don't care about the date.
@Morpho Midnight serves the first. Fixed as a property of the instrument. The rails.
IRIS serves the second. Fixed as a property of a managed service. The desk.
Both need deep variable markets underneath, and a matured Midnight just becomes one more venue a solver can source from.
One thing worth flagging: it's testnet, so not everything maps 1-1. But the rates are realistic. Solvers price against live venue rates, so a quote is close to what the same loan would actually cost.
Size is the part that won't be. They're rolling out with limited solving capacity at first, though it seems that scaling size isn't the bottleneck. Worth reaching out the the team if you need customized execution ig.
Still early, but this felt like stating a need rather than decoding a system to express one.
Good stuff from the @Glovin_ and the team.
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Closed the Telegram group. It had become spam with a few real people buried in it, which is worse than no room at all.
Reopening it one person at a time.
DM me if you opened a position on testnet, tell me what worked or give me one specific piece of feedback, and include your Telegram handle.
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IRIS Testnet is LIVE and test assets are out.
App :
We went through the responses by hand and curated some of the thoughtful responses.
If you were funded, the assets are already in the address you applied with. Nothing to claim anywhere.
Read the guide before you use the app and set up the network
Looking forward to hearing from you!
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super clean UI/UX!
but besides that I like mechanism design and definitely impressed by how elegant this solution is.
@iris_credit 👏
Quick status. The solver was failing to return quotes on a few intents.
We have taken it offline to fix and improve it.
Back shortly and quoting better than before.
IRIS Testnet is LIVE and test assets are out.
App :
We went through the responses by hand and curated some of the thoughtful responses.
If you were funded, the assets are already in the address you applied with. Nothing to claim anywhere.
Read the guide before you use the app and set up the network
Looking forward to hearing from you!
Show more
IRIS Testnet is LIVE and test assets are out.
App :
We went through the responses by hand and curated some of the thoughtful responses.
If you were funded, the assets are already in the address you applied with. Nothing to claim anywhere.
Read the guide before you use the app and set up the network
Looking forward to hearing from you!
Show more
Closing the form.
Over 2,000 submissions came in, which is well past what we can onboard by hand.
A lot of submit of submissions came at once, so to be clear :
No airdrop. No points. No rewards, now or later. Testnet activity is not tracked for any distribution.
Solver partners are integrating, and the borrowers who are interested are learning the flow before mainnet. We take each person through it ourselves, which is why the cohort is small.
However, if that is you, DM @Glovin_.
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IRIS testnet opens next week.
Submit the form below before it opens and we will have your wallet set up in advance.
IRIS testnet opens next week.
Submit the form below before it opens and we will have your wallet set up in advance.
Designer's read on @aave, @Morpho, @0xfluid, @eulerfinance, and how we designed IRIS by @k__is__silent.
As of today:
✔️ Internal Testnet is up
✔️ IRIS Solver is quoting
✔️ Two venue integrations are ready
✔️ End-to-end tests are running on SDK / Infra
Therefore, IRIS Club, which has been a private room for a while, is opening today while we wait for the testnet.
Welcome to the club.
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The line we would underline: the innovation was never that fixed rates became possible.
Fixed-rate loans have been buildable( and was built countless times ) onchain for years. What was missing was anyone willing to take the other side at your exact size and your exact duration. That is a market structure problem, not an instrument problem, and it is the part people kept trying to solve with pools.
Matching liabilities and forecasting cash flows is a different buyer from the one onchain lending was built for. Someone optimizing yield wants the best rate available right now. Someone matching a liability wants a number they can put in a model and not revisit. Those two need different products, and onchain lending has only ever shipped one of them.
"Express the outcome you want and let the protocol handle execution beneath the surface." -> IRIS
Thanks to @0xCheeezzyyyy for this amazing overview
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One of the clearest signs that DeFi credit is maturing isn't just higher TVL or lower borrow rates.
It's the structural shift in where capital is flowing.
Over the past few years, lending has grown from 26.7% to 55.5% of overall DeFi TVL according to @DefiLlama , reflecting how credit has gradually become one of the industry's foundational primitives.
Not surprisingly, this is accompanied by an increasing emphasis on institutional-grade credit infrastructure.
And I think the next leg of evolution is obvious: Fixed-term credit.
After all, the overwhelming majority of TradFi credit markets already operate this way.
Whether it's corporate bonds, private credit, structured finance or institutional lending, borrowers typically prioritise funding certainty over constantly repricing floating-rate exposure.
For years, the idea of fixed-term lending has existed across DeFi and the innovation today isn't that fixed-rate lending suddenly became possible.
It's that we're finally seeing the surrounding infrastructure evolve to support it at institutional scale.
What I am referring to is things like:
1. Scalable liquidity
2. Professional execution
3. Risk management
4. Sustained + optimised market-making.
These are the pieces that transform a primitive into an actual financial market.
As institutional capital gradually becomes a larger participant in DeFi, certainty becomes increasingly valuable.
Not every allocator wants floating-rate exposure.
Many care less about chasing the highest yield and more about matching liabilities, forecasting cash flows, and locking in funding costs.
That's exactly where fixed-term credit starts making sense.
To me, this represents one of the next major evolutions of on-chain lending.
We're moving beyond simple overcollateralised lending markets into a broader credit stack where floating rates, fixed rates, tokenised credit and RWAs can coexist + complement one another.
What's equally exciting is that we're still incredibly early.
Many of these primitives are only beginning to find PMF, which means the protocols building the right infrastructure today have a genuine opportunity to establish themselves as the default liquidity venues tomorrow.
That's why I'm particularly looking forward to seeing what @IRIS_xyz is building.
Rather than viewing fixed and floating lending as competing products, I think the long-term opportunity lies in abstracting that complexity away altogether.
Users shouldn't have to actively manage interest-rate risk, optimise across multiple venues, or constantly refinance positions.
They should simply express the outcome they want (whether that's funding certainty or cost efficiency) and let the protocol handle the execution beneath the surface.
The future of DeFi credit won't be defined by having more lending markets.
It'll be defined by making increasingly sophisticated credit strategies feel invisible to the end user.
Great read from the team, feel free to check it out 👇
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Real thanks to Hexens, their Builder Support program made a difference.
They took the part that actually matters in a multi-venue integrated lending protocol.
No audit is the final word on that, but this one came back clean, 4 Lows, nothing above.
We're almost ready.
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Hexens Builder Support × @iris_credit
Happy to have supported IRIS through our Builder Support program, backing early-stage teams building thoughtful protocols in Web3.
Our audit focused on Iris's fixed-rate lending core. interest accrual across the fixed, floating, and overdue legs, collateral and bad-debt settlement, and the Morpho and Aave venue adapters.
Wishing the IRIS team the best as they head into launch.
Full report below:
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Notice that every rate headline is written from the lender's chair. Hikes, cuts, the curve. Nobody writes the borrower's version, the one who took the loan and can't reprice it. Most of finance is built for the side that sets the rate, not the side that pays it.
IRIS is the borrower's version. You state the loan you want and we are here to serve.
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Allocators love private credit because it barely moves. The returns come in smooth, the drawdowns look shallow, and it feels safer than a public bond paying the same coupon.
Cliff Asness has a name for most of that calm: volatility laundering. The asset is not steadier than its public cousin. It is marked less often. Stop observing a price and it stops jumping on your statement, but the risk never left. It waits, unpriced, until a redemption or a forced mark makes the whole move show up at once.
Hold that next to how a DeFi borrower actually pays for capital, because onchain the trick is not for sale.
A variable-rate borrower is marked every block. Pool utilization moves, the rate moves, and it hits the vault's realized cost immediately and in public. There is no quarterly mark to stand behind. You cannot make the volatility feel smaller by looking at it less often. It might be the most observed liability in finance.
So onchain there are only two honest positions. Carry the variance yourself, fully visible, or hand it to someone who is paid to hold it.
That second position is what a fixed rate is, and it is what IRIS runs. A borrower states the terms, and solvers compete to quote a fixed rate against them. The liquidity never leaves Aave or Morpho or wherever it came from. What changes hands is the variance. The solver who wins is paid to carry the repricing risk the borrower just shed.
The stability the borrower walks away with is not the private-credit kind. It is not calm borrowed from being unobserved. It is calm that someone underwrote, and they underwrote it for the one moment laundering always fails: the spike.
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Fixed rate lending onchain is overdue, and Midnight moving this way matters.
One distinction TradFi spent decades learning, and it is easy to miss here that a fixed rate loan and a fixed rate are not the same product.
One is a lender committing principal at a fixed coupon for a term which is the bond market. The other is leaving your floating loan where it is and buying rate certainty from a separate party who is paid to carry it.
What makes the second work is that the rate can be separated from the funding without moving the principal. A treasurer with a floating loan rarely refinances into a fixed one. They keep the loan and add the swap, and the two together behave like a fixed rate loan.
Midnight is building the first onchain. IRIS sits on the second side, but it is not a rate swap. It takes the one idea underneath the swap, that the rate can be unbundled from the funding and carried by someone else, and delivers it a different way. The borrower keeps drawing from the deepest liquidity onchain, even Midnight itself, and a solver underwrites the outcome on top.
Swap-like, but not a swap. More on why that difference is the whole point soon.
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Certainty is a symptom of running a single model; calibration comes from an ensemble.
Tetlock's forecasting tournaments found that hedgehogs (experts with one big theory who filter all evidence through it) predict worse than "foxes" who hold many small, partial models and aggregate them, despite (in fact because of) the hedgehog's greater confidence.
That is precisely why ensemble methods beat single models in statistics. A random forest outperforms one deep decision tree, model-averaging beats any single estimator because averaging many independent, individually-mediocre views cancels their uncorrelated errors.
The fox is an ensemble; the hedgehog is a single over-committed model; the felt experience of certainty is the sensation of having stopped averaging. You know your forecast is degrading at the exact moment it starts to feel clean.
A borrowing rate is a forecast too. Each lending venue is a single model - one utilization curve, one governance regime, pricing its own local noise as if it were the cost of capital. Accept a fixed rate from any single venue and you've trusted a hedgehog: it feels clean, one number from one source, which is the tell.
IRIS prices across venues at once. A solver's fixed rate isn't Aave's estimate or Morpho's but it's what remains once each venue's idiosyncratic noise cancels against the others: the systematic cost of capital, no longer padded for any single venue's local shocks. The ensemble, not the hedgehog.
The rate that survived aggregation.
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A bank does not write a thirty-year mortgage, fund it once with matched thirty-year debt, and forget it.
The rate the borrower pays is fixed. Everything beneath that rate stays in motion. Short-term paper rolled against long bonds, deposits repriced, positions hedged and re-hedged continuously to hold the cost of carrying that loan as low as it will go.
GOFR is a great example of active liability management. Galaxy sources across lending markets and hands the client a single optimized rate.
IRIS points the same machinery at a different target.
A solver does the same continuous cross-venue work but the number you hold is the one you set: fixed, at origination. The variability doesn't reach you. It stays with the solver, who took the job by winning your quote.
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Introducing GOFR: the Galaxy Onchain Financing Rate.
Institutions can now access onchain credit by facing Galaxy directly instead of DeFi protocols, borrowing at a single optimized rate blended across Aave, Morpho, Spark, Kamino, and more.
No wallets. No private keys. No smart contracts. Galaxy sources, executes, and services every position, backed by up to $100M of our own capital as first-loss protection, subject to applicable terms and conditions.
Learn more:
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