Steakhouse Financial: Morpho Vault Curator, Entities, Fees and Risk Framework

Steakhouse began as a financial consulting shop for DAOs. Axios described it in 2023 as a firm created to help DAOs manage their treasuries, with MakerDAO, Lido, Venus and ENS as clients ¹⁶. In a May 2024 Arbitrum forum application, it listed three co-founders: Sébastien Derivaux, Adrian Cachinero Vasiljevic and Mark Phillips. It also reported an 11-person team, about two years in operation, and work running MakerDAO's real-world-asset reporting ¹⁵.

There are two legal layers. The website is run by Steakhouse Financial Ltd, a Cayman Islands company ³. The vault terms name Carniceria Tropical SA, incorporated in Panama and wholly owned by Steakhouse Financial Ltd, as the sole provider of the vaults and their interfaces. Users' contractual relationship is with that subsidiary only ⁴.

Morpho itself is a set of isolated lending markets. Curators package those markets into vaults ¹¹. Each vault has separate roles:

• Owner: appoints the curator and the safety role.
• Curator: chooses which markets and collateral are allowed, sets exposure caps and fees, and appoints allocators.
• Allocator: moves deposits between the allowed markets.
• Sentinel (called Guardian in V1 vaults): can reduce risk and cancel pending changes.

Most curator changes go through a timelock, so depositors can exit before a change takes effect ¹¹. Steakhouse's V1 vaults use one owner address and one curator address across the book, a separate guardian for each vault, and timelocks of three to seven days ¹⁰.

Steakhouse's terms describe its job as "solely" curating: setting strategy parameters in vault contracts. They say it is not a broker, custodian or adviser and owes depositors no fiduciary duty ⁴.

Steakhouse groups its vaults by mandate ⁵⁶:

• Prime: lends only against the most liquid collateral.
• High Yield: underwrites longer-tail assets such as Pendle principal tokens and yield-bearing stablecoins.
• Turbo: leveraged strategies.

Each mandate can also come in Instant (variable rate, immediate redemption) or Term (fixed rate, redemption timelock) versions ⁵.

Morpho's API, queried October 23, 2026, lists 42 Steakhouse-curated Vault V2 vaults holding about $2.16 billion ⁹. The largest were:

• Steakhouse USDG on Robinhood Chain: about $537M.
• High Yield USDC Edition on Base: about $469M.
• Grove x Steakhouse USDC on Base: about $444M.
• Prime vaults for EURCV, USDC and USDT on Ethereum and Base.

Another 20 listed V1 vaults remain, led by Steakhouse USDC on Base (about $116M) ¹⁰. Steakhouse's own $4.12B figure is larger than these Morpho totals. It covers its whole curated book and is not directly comparable ¹. Partner-branded vaults include Bitget, Ethena, Farcaster, Grove and 3F ⁹.

Outside vaults, Steakhouse sells white-label "Build" products to fintechs and exchanges. It also offers advisory work and capital-raising and underwriting services. It is involved with Grove, an institutional credit protocol that Steakhouse describes as a Sky SubDAO ²¹². Coinbase users can lend USDC through Steakhouse-curated vaults. On October 22, 2026, Steakhouse said it was onboarding Robinhood stock tokens as collateral for its USDG vault ².

Steakhouse charges a performance fee, a cut of the interest that depositors earn, set separately for each vault ⁹¹⁰. As of October 23, 2026:

Many Prime V2 vaults charge 0%. The two Base USDC vaults that Coinbase users are most likely to meet, the High Yield USDC Edition (V2) and Steakhouse USDC (V1), charge 25% ⁹¹⁰. Check the fee on the vault page before you deposit. Network gas is extra.

Steakhouse publishes its risk framework in its docs ⁶. It says its first duty is to "preserve principal and enable liquidity," and it works in three steps:

1. Market selection and configuration: choosing collateral, LLTV (the loan-to-value at which loans are liquidated) and oracles.
2. Vault setup and controls.
3. Automated monitoring and reallocation, with manual overrides.

Each collateral asset gets a Multi-Layer Risk Rating built from asset, platform and market sub-ratings. The resulting Final Market Rating decides which vault grade the asset can enter and the exposure limits. Steakhouse also says it will only onboard collateral whose issuer keeps an open line of communication with it ⁶.

Risks remain. Curated vaults can still take bad debt if collateral depegs or an oracle fails. High Yield vaults deliberately take on longer-tail assets. Borrower demand can also briefly limit withdrawals. Background: stablecoin depegs.