In practice, we support different assets, vaults, custody products and customers. Each product has its own underlying asset, risk profile and yield target. Each should therefore be compared with products using the same asset and a similar level of risk.

Our customers are looking for long-term, scalable and sustainable yield

A large part of our business is institutional. Digital Asset Treasuries, publicly listed companies and licensed entities face strict treasury policies, audit requirements, custody rules and liquidity requirements. These customers have a different risk profile, and we deliberately take a more conservative approach to yield.

For example, the institutional BTC clients we are working to onboard through BitGo and Ceffu are looking for returns of 1%–2%, or 3%+ if they are comfortable taking more risk. For customers whose BTC would otherwise earn zero, even 1%–2% is meaningful, particularly when they can keep the underlying assets in qualified custody.

These customers need scalable yield that meets their custody and risk requirements. They are looking to make assets they already intend to hold over the long term productive.

This is relevant to the question about lower DeFi yields. The reason these customers use Concrete goes beyond the headline APY. Custody, reporting, liquidity and the ability to support significant capital are all part of the decision. A sustainable 1%–3% on BTC can meet their needs even when it looks modest next to a stablecoin yield.

Our ETH and USDT products show why the comparison matters

In the August yield comparison:

• ETH: For ETH products with more than $500M of TVL, Concrete had the second-highest yield, behind only Coinbase. Our weETH vault held approximately $750M and showed a 2.37% seven-day annualized yield.

• USDT: Our USDT vault was one of the highest-yielding USDT products in the market. It has generally offered 7.5%–10%, without unsecured credit or looping risk.

The reported yields for these products did not rely on temporary incentives, looping, junior-tranche exposure or directional trading.

These products serve different requirements from an institutional BTC product targeting 1%–3%. Looking at one blended yield number misses those differences.

Our TVL is unincentivized, which supports its durability

We have run no major incentive campaigns or TVL programmes to drive this growth. Customers are using Concrete for the underlying products and yield.

That is important when considering why TVL would remain. There is no major incentive programme ending that removes the reason for those deposits. Institutional customers also have ongoing reasons to use the platform, including the custody integrations, reporting and ability to earn within their existing requirements.

The growth data supports this. Over the twelve-month period highlighted in our materials, TVL grew from approximately $7M to $1.16B. Vaults.fyi’s State of DeFi Curation report showed Concrete moving from unranked to the fourth-largest curator while broader supply-side DeFi TVL declined by 41.8%.

‍State of DeFi Curation report

That growth happened through a weaker market without major incentive campaigns supporting the TVL.

Concrete operates across several different models

• Earn and Vaults: Yield infrastructure through public and private vaults.

• Enterprise: Partners use Concrete’s infrastructure to offer vault products. Depending on the arrangement, Concrete or the partner sets the strategy and allocation parameters.

• AssetCX: Institutional assets remain with a qualified custodian while Concrete provides the infrastructure and yield strategy.

In many of our larger relationships, the partner is our customer, custodian or distribution channel. In others, the partner brings its own strategy and uses our infrastructure.

Our business is a mix of B2B and B2C across these product lines. Large institutional relationships account for a meaningful share of TVL, but customer concentration, underlying protocol exposure and revenue concentration are different considerations. The products have different fee structures, so a larger share of TVL does not necessarily represent the same share of revenue.

Due diligence and risk controls are part of the infrastructure

Products, protocols and strategies go through due diligence before deployment. Our infrastructure includes execution, accounting, monitoring and operational controls, alongside security reviews.

For AssetCX, the underlying assets remain with the qualified custodian and are not transferred into a DeFi vault contract. The associated yield strategy still needs to be assessed for protocol, counterparty, liquidity and borrowing risks where applicable. Keeping assets in custody addresses an important part of the risk, but does not make the strategy risk-free.

AssetCX gives Concrete a differentiated institutional position

AssetCX was co-developed with BitGo. It allows institutional customers to access yield while keeping their underlying assets within qualified custody.

Working in this environment requires more than a yield strategy. It requires custody integrations, legal structures, accounting, reporting, monitoring and operational controls. These capabilities are a significant part of what we have built.

We are also expanding the underlying opportunities. The USD1 RWA Vault includes cross-border settlement financing, private credit, euro-denominated private credit and data center financing. These provide additional sources of yield with different economic drivers.

Our objective is to unlock significant new capital across different assets, with the appropriate yield and risk profile for each customer. That is why the platform should be evaluated across its products and institutional use cases.