Morpho says AI marketing tool wrote deleted post questioning its curator business model

Morpho co-founder and CEO Paul Frambot said early on Sept. 26 that a third-party artificial intelligence (AI) marketing tool wrote and published a post from Morpho's official X account. The post said curator businesses on the protocol depend on private distribution deals rather than onchain vault fees.

Frambot said Morpho removed the post and immediately revoked the tool's access to the account. He said the team was still investigating what triggered the post and apologised for the noise. He did not name the tool.

The post was reviewed by The Defiant in a screenshot published by the X account cryptographic. It is no longer on Morpho's account.

Key points

• Frambot said the post "was neither written nor published by us" and that a third-party AI marketing tool originated it.
• He did not say whether the figures in the post were correct, and he did not dispute its contents.
• The post said Morpho had gone through 11 live distributor integrations in the prior week and that most curator businesses are not yet self-sustaining from vault fees alone.
• Aave founder Stani Kulechov said the post might be the most bearish take for MORPHO holders.
• Morpho's own documentation describes the revenue structures the post referred to, including an offchain legal agreement.

What the deleted post said about curator economics

The post opened by saying protocol risk curation "looks like a clean software business until you pull open the distributor contracts". It described one retail integration charging 0% fees, saying the protocol was manually funding a 7% target yield out of pocket just to keep the shelf space.

Another integration, it said, takes 25% of annual percentage yield (APY), split 80/15/5 between exchange, curator and middleware, leaving the curator 15% of that cut. APY is the yearly return on money supplied to a lending market.

The post also said base vault fees will not pay a team, and that without offchain fee splits, custom wrappers or protocol subsidies the unit economics break. It said the business "lives in the private distribution agreements, not the onchain fee switch".

The screenshot showed the post about an hour old with roughly 1,000 views. The post attached figures to arrangements that Morpho's documentation describes only in general terms.

How curators and distributors earn revenue

Curators allocate depositor funds across Morpho's lending markets and set vault risk parameters. The fees they charge are the revenue model for firms including Steakhouse Financial and Gauntlet, according to the report.

Morpho's documentation lists three ways a distributor can take a cut: a fee wrapper layered on an existing vault, an onchain splitter contract, and an offchain agreement in which partners negotiate a legal contract and settle through periodic payouts. It gives "50/50 on performance fees" and "60% curator / 40% distributor" as illustrative splits.

Vault fees are set by the curator. Morpho's fee documentation caps the performance fee at 50% of generated interest and the Vaults V2 management fee at 5% a year. A Morpho blog post on curators says they "can also partner with distributors (for example, fintechs or platforms) and enter into revenue-sharing agreements".

Numbers on curator revenue and protocol fees

DefiLlama lists Steakhouse Financial with $2.6 billion in total value locked (TVL) — the value of assets deposited — and $407,000 in revenue over 30 days. Gauntlet shows $1.62 billion in TVL and $36,500 over the same period.

The fee switch mentioned in the post sits with Morpho governance. Morpho's governance documentation gives the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) — a group of token holders that votes on protocol decisions — the power to activate it, capped at 25% of interest paid by borrowers. DefiLlama lists $19 million in fees over 30 days against $0 in protocol revenue, with borrow interest and liquidation fees going to lenders and liquidators. Monthly incentives run about $490,000.

The deleted post did not name the retail integration charging 0% fees. Morpho's account posted on Sept. 25 that Robinhood Earn, curated by Steakhouse Financial, holds more than $500 million in deposits, and Robinhood's page advertises an estimated 7% APY on USDG lent through Morpho. The Defiant reported in July that Robinhood pays the gap between organic yield and the 7% target for a year. The report does not say that Robinhood Earn is the integration described in the deleted post.

Pushback over where the numbers came from

Kulechov quoted the screenshot at 6:42 p.m. ET on Sept. 25, 76 minutes after cryptographic posted it. He wrote that the post said a 7% yield is not sustainable and is only there to pay for shelf space, and that neither Morpho's monetization model nor curator monetization would ever become sustainable onchain. He called it a wild read and said it might be the most bearish take for the token's holders.

Frambot responded at 1:18 a.m. ET on Sept. 26, saying the tweet was neither written nor published by Morpho and originated from a third-party AI marketing tool. He said the post was removed shortly after it went live and the third party's access was revoked, and that the team was still investigating what triggered it.

Cryptographic replied eight minutes later, asking where the AI got the numbers: 11 distributor integrations, 0%, 7%, 25% and the 80/15/5 split. Glen, who lists work on lending at Kraken and Ink, wrote that a "third-party AI marketing tool" would need access to confidential deal terms and direct posting access on the main account.

The exchange followed an earlier dispute a day before. Frambot had proposed splitting onchain vaults into noncustodial and discretionary regulatory categories, and Kulechov called the split self-serving. Cryptographic also pushed back on that proposal. Kulechov had not responded to Frambot's explanation as of publication.

What is confirmed

• A post appeared on Morpho's official X account and was later removed.
• Frambot said a third-party AI marketing tool wrote and published it, and that Morpho revoked the tool's access.
• Frambot did not dispute the post's contents and did not say whether its figures were accurate.
• Kulechov commented on the screenshot before Frambot's explanation.
• Morpho's documentation states that distributors can be paid through offchain revenue-sharing agreements, alongside onchain options.

What is still unclear

• The name of the AI tool, and what caused it to publish the post.
• Whether the specific figures in the post — 11 integrations, the 0% fee arrangement, the 7% target yield, the 25% cut and the 80/15/5 split — are accurate. The Defiant reported that Frambot did not say.
• Which retail integration the post was describing. The deleted post did not name it.

Why the discussion matters for MORPHO holders

The post questioned how curator firms on Morpho earn money, and whether that model works without private deals or protocol subsidies. Kulechov framed it as bearish for MORPHO holders.

Morpho holds $11 billion in TVL across 45 chains, up 16% over 30 days, with $5.43 billion in active loans, according to DefiLlama data cited by The Defiant. Aave holds $19.3 billion.

MORPHO traded down 6.6% over 24 hours and 2.3% over seven days, according to CoinGecko. AAVE rose 5.4% and 7.8% over the same periods.

Sources

• The Defiant