Wintermute enters DeFi vault space with Armitage, supporting 'collateral types that other curators cannot'

Crypto market maker Wintermute has unveiled its new DeFi vault curation platform, Armitage.

Like other vaults, Armitage vault curators will be able to design vaults based on specific risk profiles to access various DeFi lending opportunities. These vaults are non-custodial, meaning users maintain control of their funds, and also have no KYC requirements for depositors, according to the announcement.

Vaults have become an increasingly hot area of focus for the institutional side of crypto, following the success of platforms like Morpho on Ethereum and Kamino on Solana, with asset managers like Apollo and crypto exchanges like Kraken deploying vault strategies.

Part of the appeal of vaults is that curators allow institutions to take a hands-off approach to interacting with crypto, and the other in-built security features of smart contracts. Curators allocate capital and rebalance exposures to generate yield in sometimes complex strategies across lending, liquidity provisioning, and restaking while following pre-set risk parameters, so users do not have to actively monitor or intervene.

"DeFi lending has reached a scale where strategy and risk management matter just as much as access," Wintermute CEO Evgeny Gaevoy said. "Vaults themselves have become an increasingly visible part of the DeFi stack for institutional capital."

Wintermute adds to the vault scene as a market maker with more than $10 billion in daily trading volume, with knowledge of hundreds of platforms and exchanges across over 50 chains. Moreover, Wintermute can execute liquidations itself, enabling Armitage to accept "collateral types that other curators cannot."

This isn’t the first time Wintermute has gotten involved in the crypto lending space. Wintermute is a financial backer of the undercollateralized lending platform Wildcat, in which Gaevoy is a silent partner.