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Moonwell Brief · Joel ObafemiIssue №004 · April 2026

Moonwell Brief

A Floor, Not a Recovery

Combined supply held flat at $103.4 million as Core rose 4.7 percent on price not deposits, the vaults kept bleeding, supply concentrated into fewer wallets, and bad debt finally began to erode.

BaseOptimismMoonbeam
11 min readCite this issue

§ 01Headline finding

pril was a floor, not a recovery. As of April 30, 2026, Moonwell held $103.4 million supplied, essentially flat on March's $102.9 million. Core lending rose 4.7 percent to $77.5 million, but that was price, not deposits: the constant-price net flow stayed negative at $8.6 million. Beneath the flat headline, the vaults kept shrinking (down 10.5 percent to $25.9 million), supply concentrated (top 10 wallets up to 30.9 percent), and the one genuinely positive signal was that bad debt finally began to erode, falling to $5.3 million from $6.4 million.

The split beneath the flat headline was the story: Core lending stabilized in dollar terms while the vaults continued to leak and small depositors continued to leave, leaving a more concentrated book. Governance was a maintenance month, dominated by Wormhole bridge upgrades. The slow decline in shortfall, led by cbXRP and VIRTUAL working off, was the first sign the February damage was healing rather than just sitting.

§ 02Overview

Net supply flow by chain, April 2026 (constant-price)
-$4.68M-$3.51M-$2.34M-$1.17M$0Base CoreBase VaultsOptimismMoonbeam
April held near March's pace: a net $8.5 million out, split across Base Core and the vaults, with Optimism roughly flat. Hover any bar for the figure.
Source: GraphQL indexer (constant-price: balances valued at a single Apr-end oracle price map)
Month over month, Mar 31 to Apr 30, 2026
MetricMar 31Apr 30Change
Combined supplied$102.9M$103.4M+$500K
Core lending$74.0M$77.5M+$3.5M
Vaults TVL$29.0M$25.9M−$3.0M
Active suppliers17,97516,545−1,430
Bad debt (shortfall)$6.41M$5.30M−$1.1M
Protocol revenue$52.8K$49.4K−$3.4K

These levels are oracle-priced at each month-end, so the change reflects both flows and token price drift; the constant-price net flow is given in the headline.

Moonwell by chain, as of April 30, 2026
ChainCore suppliedVaults TVLCombinedCore borrowedCore utilization
Base$72.1M$25.9M$98.0M$29.2M40.5%
Optimism$3.9M$0$3.9M$1.8M46.8%
Moonbeam$1.5M$0$1.5M$30K2.4%
Moonwell total$77.5M$25.9M$103.4M$31.1M40.1%

The combined total moved 0.4 percent, but the halves diverged: Core up 4.7 percent in dollars, vaults down 10.5 percent. At constant prices both still saw net withdrawals, so the flat headline reflects price recovery offsetting continued, slower outflows. All USD figures are constant-price, read from the Moonwell oracle at the end-of-month block on each chain.

Core supply rose 4.7 percent in dollars and fell on deposits in the same month. Only one of those describes what suppliers did, and it was still a small net exit.

§ 03Markets and real yield

MORPHO continued its climb to $11.2 million supplied, the second-largest Base market, having grown every month of the year. USDC fell to $15.4 million while its utilization jumped to 81.1 percent. cbETH's rates fully normalized after the February incident and March restitution, its base supply APY back to 1.26 percent.

Largest Base Core markets by supply, as of April 30, 2026
MarketSuppliedBorrowedUtilizationBase supply APYBase borrow APY
USDC$15.4M$12.5M81.1%3.37%4.65%
MORPHO$11.2M$400K3.8%0.02%0.88%
cbBTC$9.3M$1.7M18.2%0.18%1.12%
WETH$8.9M$7.5M83.8%0.89%1.18%
AERO$7.0M$1.9M27.0%1.09%6.40%
LBTC$4.2M$300K7.3%0.03%0.45%
cbETH$4.0M$1.8M44.0%1.26%3.63%
cbXRP$3.2M$1.1M34.7%1.06%4.77%

USDC's base supply rate recovered to 3.37 percent, and with a 1.23 point WELL boost cleared the 3.72 percent T-bill at 4.61 percent all-in, the first comfortable premium since January. Most other markets still paid well under risk-free.

Real yield, selected Base markets, April 2026 (vs 3.72% T-bill)
MarketBase supply APYWELL incentiveAll-in supply APY
USDC3.37%+1.23%4.61%
EURC2.14%+0.13%2.27%
cbXRP1.06%+0.24%1.30%
WETH0.89%+0.34%1.23%

§ 04Wallets and risk

Concentration reached a new high: the top 10 wallets held 30.9 percent of supplied value and the top 50 held 56.1 percent, up from 25.2 and 51.4 percent in March, as small depositors kept exiting and the largest positions stayed. The risk read improved for the first time: collateral within 10 percent of liquidation eased to $5.1 million, and bad debt fell to $5.3 million from $6.4 million, led by cbXRP working down to $1.0 million. cbETH remained the stubborn pocket at $1.7 million.

Bad debt by market, April 30, 2026
MarketShortfall
cbETH$1.70M
cbXRP$1.05M
VIRTUAL$860K
WETH$550K
Total (all markets)$5.30M

Anthias Labs' April recommendations were mostly housekeeping: lowering LBTC and tBTC collateral factors toward 80 percent and trimming Base and Optimism stablecoin rate multipliers to track the bear-market decline in borrow costs, with the thin Optimism weETH market paused.

§ 05Liquidations

Liquidations stayed at baseline for a second month: 244 events seizing $42,400 of collateral against $38,500 of debt repaid, in line with March. The market remained calm, with no forced unwinding.

§ 06Vaults

The vaults were the quarter's persistent leak, falling to $25.9 million from $29.0 million, a fourth straight monthly decline and a constant-price net outflow of $4.3 million. The Flagship ETH vault overtook Flagship USDC as the largest at $11.5 million.

Moonwell-Morpho vaults, as of April 30, 2026
VaultTVL
Flagship ETH$11.5M
Flagship USDC$10.3M
Frontier cbBTC$2.3M
Flagship EURC$1.7M
Ecosystem USDC$100K
All vaults$25.9M

§ 07Financials

Gross fees eased to $198,300 as borrowing softened and the liquidation contribution stayed minimal. Protocol revenue was $49,400 at a 0.58 percent annualized take rate, holding near March's level. With liquidations absent, April's economics were almost entirely interest-driven.

Fees and revenue, April 2026
LineAmount
Gross fees: borrower interest$183,100
Gross fees: liquidation bonus$3,900
Gross fees: Morpho vault performance$11,400
Total gross fees$198,300
Protocol revenue (all sources)$49,400
Annualized take rate0.58%

§ 08OEV

OEV recaptured was $7,300 across 8 events, tracking the quiet month. The protocol capture share is omitted pending a correction to how OEV capture was calculated.

§ 09Governance

April was an infrastructure month, nine proposals dominated by cross-chain bridge maintenance: fixing post-audit Wormhole findings and upgrading the xWELL bridge adapter, alongside the recurring incentive and recommendation proposals.

Selected proposals, April 2026
ProposalTitleVoters
MIP-X52Upgrade xWELL Bridge Adapter335
MIP-X49Fix Wormhole Post-V3 Audit Findings317
MIP-X50Anthias Labs Monthly Recommendations (Apr)289
MIP-X51CAutomated Liquidity Incentive Proposal181

The agenda reflected a protocol no longer in crisis, back to routine cross-chain maintenance and the monthly incentive cadence. None of the executed proposals drew material opposition.

§ 10Cross-deployment and token

Base lending venues by supplied USD, April 2026
$0$1.10B$2.20B$3.29B$4.39BMorpho BlueAave V3MoonwellFluidCompound V3
Moonwell (highlighted) ranks third on Base by supplied USD, an order of magnitude below Morpho Blue and Aave V3 but clear of the next tier. The linear scale shows the gap honestly.
Source: DefiLlama Base TVL + borrowed; Moonwell row is its own oracle-priced Base core

Ranked against the other Base lending venues, Moonwell was the third-largest by core lending supply at the April close, behind Morpho Blue and Aave V3 and ahead of Fluid, Compound V3, Euler, and Seamless. Its $72.1 million of Base core lending held third even as the reshaping accelerated: Aave V3 on Base fell to $801 million from $1.18 billion in March while Morpho Blue pushed above $4 billion. The five Moonwell vaults are Morpho Blue deposits, counted under Morpho's total, so they are left out of the ranking to avoid double-counting.

Base lending venues by supplied USD, April 30, 2026
RankVenueSupplied
1Morpho Blue$4.07 billion
2Aave V3$801 million
3Moonwell$72.1 million
4Fluid$45.3 million
5Compound V3$39.8 million
6Euler V2$4.1 million
7Seamless$2.1 million

WELL closed April at $0.004109, an $18.7 million market cap. Staked stkWELL rose again, to 27.8 percent of circulating supply, a third straight monthly increase even as TVL fell.

Methodology

Core lending USD is on-chain from the Moonwell oracle at the month-end block; vaults, flows, retention, concentration, and risk are from the protocol indexer and on-chain comptroller reads. Financials are the dashboard ledger. Comparators are DefiLlama (TVL plus borrowed). Flows and retention are constant-price, which is why Core supply can rise in dollars while net flows stay negative. The risk-free reference is the 1-month US Treasury yield (3.72 percent). A net-of-gas liquidator breakdown is pending.

§ 11Looking ahead

May brings Moonwell's Ethereum launch and the close of the second quarter. Watch whether the constant-price outflow finally turns positive, whether the vaults stop bleeding after four declines, whether bad debt keeps eroding off $5.3 million, and how much early liquidity the new Ethereum deployment attracts.

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