Pangolins: The Morpho and Lista Vault Curator Behind Pangolins USDC

Pangolins says a curator should be a "boundary keeper," not a yield packager ¹. In practice, it says it does four things:

• It looks at protocols, collateral, liquidity and dependencies before entering any market.
• It prefers over-collateralized lending markets with clear exits.
• It pauses expansion when risk rises.
• It handles recoverable liquidity first ¹.

It publishes its principles and a public monitoring page. That page tracks the vault's collateral (cbBTC), Morpho itself and the Base network, and labels each one "Normal" or flags an alert ². Pangolins says the exact thresholds, exit rules and timing it uses are kept private, so depositors can see the framework but not the triggers ¹.

Depositors put USDC into the vault and receive vault shares. The vault lends the USDC to borrowers in Morpho markets that Pangolins has approved. Morpho's docs split control into four roles ⁵:

• Owner: appoints the other roles.
• Curator: chooses allowed markets and caps, and sets the fee.
• Allocators: move funds between approved markets.
• Guardian or sentinel: can block pending changes.

For Pangolins USDC, a Pangolins address is the owner, a separate guardian address is set, and curator changes wait three days before taking effect ⁴. That window is the depositor's chance to exit if they disagree with a change.

On October 23, 2026, all of the vault's assets were in a single market lending USDC against cbBTC, Coinbase's wrapped bitcoin ⁴. That makes the vault's risk largely a bet that liquidations in that one market work. If cbBTC fell sharply and liquidations lagged, any bad debt would hit depositors. When most of the market's USDC is borrowed, withdrawals can also wait until borrowers repay. Morpho data shows the vault was created on November 13, 2025 ⁴.

Pangolins addresses also hold Morpho Vault V2 deployments on Base, Ethereum and Arc. Each held under $200 on the snapshot date ⁴.

The Morpho vault charges a 10% performance fee, meaning Pangolins keeps 10% of the interest earned. There is no separate management fee ⁴. Base network gas applies. The Lista USDT vault's fee was not verified for this profile. Check it on Lista before depositing.