Project title : Create a new subscription business model, based on a Morpho Vault.
Organization Name : The Big Whale
Organization website and / or social medias
https://en.thebigwhale.io/
x.com
https ://en.linkedin.com/company/the-big-whale
About Us + Prior Experience
The Big Whale is a crypto expert business information platform that provides independent, high quality crypto and data insights for professional investors, financial actors, bankers, family offices, and crypto actors. (BNP, Société Générale, VISA, Mastercard, Coinbase, Circle, Kiln, Crédit Agricole to name some of our clients…)
We also address about 25K retail subscribers in Europe, that have the possibility to pay a yearly subscription to unlock all our content.
Our goal, as developed in “objective”, is to build a fully on-chain subscription model that revolves around users having to deposit into a Morpho Vault to be subscribed, rather than the classic subscription model of paying each year with a credit card.
The Big Whale has been covering Morpho’s approach to decentralized lending, highlighting its key features such as permissionless market creation, efficiency gains, new business opportunities for DeFi actors and Curators, or oracle-agnostic pricing.
- https ://en.thebigwhale.io/article-en/compound-aave-morpho-how-lending-is-reinventing-itself-in-defi
- https ://en.thebigwhale.io/article-en/aave-vs-morpho-the-great-lending-match
- https ://en.thebigwhale.io/article-en/paul-frambot-morpho-labs-aave-is-a-bank-whereas-morpho-is-an-infrastructure-for-banks
- https: // en.thebigwhale. io /article-en /paul-frambot-morpho-labs-aave-is-a-bank-whereas-morpho-is-an-infrastructure-for-banks
- https:// en.thebigwhale. io/article-en/ morpho-blue-ready-to-bring-defi-to-the-real-world
Our last report, that was about the DeFi and TradFi convergence was sponsored by the Morpho Association and can be found here
- https ://en.thebigwhale.io/reports/defi-tradfi-la-grande-convergence
Note : as an independant business information company, The Big Whale ensures a strict separation between editorial content and the rest of the operations.
Editorial independence is maintained at all times, guaranteeing impartial reporting and prioritizing readers’ trust.
Leading Contributor(s):
- Alexandre Gabadou Head of Product - https ://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandre-gabadou/
- Grégory Raymond : Head of Research https ://x.com/gregory_raymond
- Raphaël Bloch Head of News : https ://x.com/Raph_Bloch / https: //www. linkedin. com /in/raphael-bloch-/
- Dimitri Granger CEO : https ://www.linkedin.com/in/grangerdimitri/
- Hugo PANCZAK (Head of Crypto) - https ://x.com/ZakLaMedaille / built https ://whiteloop.capital
- Arthursw.eth (Product Manager) https:// x. com/Arthurws14
- Stakehouse finance (Curation/vault parameters) : https:// www.steakhouse.financial/
Requested Budget:
20K MORPHO
Scope of Work
Our Objective :
At The Big Whale, we acknowledge how Morpho’s permissionless infrastructure can be leveraged as a back-end to build innovative new products that benefits more end-users compared to both Web2, or other Web3 not flexible DeFi solutions.
We propose to use Morpho’s protocol to build a fully on-chain subscription model leveraging the vault’s infrastructure as a back-end
Instead of charging a flat subscription fee, subscribers will deposit funds (USDC- Base, curated by Steakhouse) into a Morpho vault to access paywalled content
Indeed, the immutable and governance-minimized approach of Morpho’s stack ensures full ownership , flexibility and overall control over the infrastructure, which are key to reinforcing media’s independence.
Context
In today’s media landscape, subscription is considered the best revenue model to build trust and independence. However, many readers are reluctant to pay monthly or annually to support their favorite media outlets. This has forced media companies to rely on SEO-driven strategies and paid content models. These approaches prioritize maximizing page views and advertising revenue over delivering high-quality, in-depth content that genuinely benefits readers.
This dynamic creates a fundamental misalignment between the interests of readers—seeking reliable and valuable information—and media organizations, which are pressured to chase clicks and visibility only
Advantages for Subscribers:
- Productive Subscription:
- Deposited funds generate yield through Morpho’s lending markets, providing subscribers with a financial return while enjoying premium access.
- Liquidity and Flexibility:
- Subscribers can withdraw their initial deposit plus accrued interest at any time, effectively “unsubscribing” without losing money, unlike traditional subscription models where payments are non-refundable.
- Empowerment:
- Subscribers become stakeholders in the system, aligning incentives with both the media and the DeFi ecosystem by supporting decentralized finance.
Advantages for the Media:
- Aligned Incentives:
- Media organizations are paid directly by their readers via performance fees on the yield generated from subscriptions. This removes the dependence on ad revenue.
- A subscription model aligns the media’s success with delivering value to its readers, as income scales with user satisfaction and retention.
- The vault deposit token can be used as a governance token on certain topic, giving the power to subscribers of owning their medias, and be at the center of it
- Alternative to the problem of web2 subscription :
- Morpho’s immutable and governance limited approach offers a permissionless, flexible, and scalable alternative to the current subscription model, allowing in the case of media for more censorship resistance, and to have independence and have control over it’s financial streamline
- Full transparency to subscribers and readers
- This on-chain subscription model ensures full transparency in financial flows.
Subscribers can verify how their deposits are being used, track the yield generated, and see the performance fees earned by the media.
This openness builds trust between readers and media companies
Benefit for the Morpho Ecosystem:
- The subscription model channels deposits directly into Morpho Base’s instance, increasing TVL.
- Fits the “DeFi Mullet” play by showcasing how Morpho can be used as an infrastructure tool to build new financial applications on top.
- Strengthen Morpho DAO’s visibility and user engagement by leveraging TBW’s active user base (9M monthly reach / visibility to decision makers in tradfi).
Metrics:
- $100K fees generated for the media through curator fees (in order to showcase to other media companies how it is possible through Morpho’s Vaults to monetize audience in a new way that doesn’t rely on web2 models such as SEO / paid content)
- 1000 unique deposit addresses of at least 500$ or 4M TVL
Timeline:
This breakdown is done in the form of User Stories, which include discovery, design, implementation, testing and the move to production.
Phase 1: Wallet Connection (1 month)
- Allow a user to connect and view his Web3 wallet on The Big Whale (TBW) Web-App
- Allow a user to receive TBW Newsletter when he has a connection with his Web3 wallet
Phase 2: Setup and Web-App integration (1.5 month)
- Allow a user to stake/unstake USDC on TBW Web-App and Morpho app
- Allow a user to access TBW premium content by holding tbwUSDC (deposit token)
- Allow a user to see a dashboard with users subscription, current vault exposure, current APY inside TBW Web-App
Future Directions
- Provide a smart-wallet for our non-crypto user
- Enable On-Ramp in order to fund user’s smart wallet
- Deploy a similar model that allows for ETH deposit as an alternative to USDC, allowing subscribers to keep exposure to the market.
- Create a second vault that would take the deposit token as collateral, in order to allow subscribers to “borrow against their subscription”
- Extend this subscription model to other medias
- Use the vault’s deposit token as a governance token for the Guardian address (https ://forum.morpho.org/t/steakhouse-metamorpho-vaults-are-upgrading-their-guardian-setups-to-fully-trustless/527)
- Use the vault’s deposit token as a governance token for media governance.