Background
Birch Hill Labs was founded by people who spent the first part of their careers in institutional markets at Goldman Sachs and BlackRock, and the last five years deep in onchain markets. Curation is where those two backgrounds meet. Since inception our goal has been to be a driving force behind the growth and scale of asset-backed credit onchain, and this launch is the first step: hard-asset financing running on onchain rails.
Most onchain lending is structurally propped up by demand for leveraged looping. Borrowers recycle collateral to amplify a trade, and when the trade fades, the market fades with it. Our mandate is the other kind of borrowing: financing backed by hard assets, where demand comes from a balance sheet that needs capital rather than a position that needs leverage. We believe Morpho’s isolated market architecture is the right venue for that credit, because each market pairs one collateral asset with one loan asset and its parameters are fixed at deployment.
Curation approach
Our work starts from the asset, not the yield. Before we deploy a market, we underwrite the collateral the way the underlying credit has always been underwritten. For real estate, that means property-level diligence on the full portfolio, reconciliation of the capital stack, and valuation cross-checks against independent appraisals and market indices. Yield is what remains after an asset clears that process, not the reason it enters it.
All of our risk underwriting and reporting can be found on the Birch Hill website, broken down by asset and opportunity. These reports contain market risk parameters, public market comparables, asset-level underwriting, as well as details on liquidity pathways and risk factors & mitigants.
Risk framework
Markets must clear the following before the vault allocates:
- Asset-level underwriting of the collateral, including diligence on the underlying portfolio and its capital structure
- Oracle design appropriate to the asset, with independent review of the underlying valuations
- Conservative loan-to-value limits set from stress scenarios, deliberately below protocol maximums
- Continuous monitoring of collateral behavior, utilization, and oracle integrity after deployment
First vault: Birch Hill RWA USDC Vault
The vault supplies USDC into isolated Morpho markets that meet the framework above. It is live on Base in controlled rollout.
| Parameter | Detail |
|---|---|
| Supply asset | USDC |
| Mandate | Supplying liquidity to asset-backed credit opportunities and RWAs on Base. |
| Chain | Base |
| First target market | GRO/USDC (isolated) |
| Collateral | GRO — tokenized equity in the GromaREIT, a private multifamily REIT in Northeast urban core markets |
| Oracle | NAV oracle and transparency reporting provided by Chronicle |
| LLTV | 62.5% |
| Fees | 10% performance fee |
Borrowing demand in the GRO/USDC market comes from GRO holders seeking liquidity against their real estate holdings, including GromaCorp borrowing against its balance sheet for reinvestment. This is durable, balance-sheet-driven demand, and it is the profile we will look for in every market we add. More real-world collateral will follow as assets clear the framework.
Transparency
Our full strategy documentation, including the strategy mandate, risk parameters, oracle methodology, and compliance stack, is public in the Birch Hill Vault Book. The market state is observable onchain at any time. We will post material vault changes and periodic curation updates in this category.
Resources
- birchhill.io
- Documentation
- Contact: info@birchhill.io