Jack Paul 
Compound Finance, one of the older lending protocols in decentralized finance, just went through a major reset. On Monday, it approved a $52 million budget and replaced its leadership team. The plan is to attract new capital by focusing on institutional users, real-world assets, partner integration, and credit infrastructure for traditional markets.
Why the move now
The platform has lost a lot of ground since its peak. Total value locked on Compound dropped to around $1.2 billion, down from $12 billion in September 2021. Competitors have pulled ahead. Aave, for example, holds about $14.8 billion in TVL, more than 11 times Compound’s current number, according to DeFiLlama.
Compound started in 2018 and helped popularize the idea of earning yield on crypto deposits without intermediaries. The protocol says it has processed roughly $480 billion in deposits and borrowing volume since launch. But those early days are far behind. The entire DeFi sector is now working from a weaker base. Total TVL across DeFi is around $70 billion, down by more than a third since the start of the year. The drop comes from a broad crypto market correction, compressed yields, and a string of protocol exploits, including the $292 million KelpDAO hack in April.
Still, there is optimism about certain parts of the market. Standard Chartered projects the sector could reach $2.7 trillion by 2030, with tokenized real-world assets among the fastest-growing areas. Some in the industry think this is a good time for Compound to push forward. The thinking is that real capital combined with people who understand how institutional risk committees work could help bring confidence back to DeFi.
New faces in leadership
The new team includes Christopher Donovan as chief operating officer, a role he held at the Near Foundation. Steven Liu, who helped scale Maple Finance from $500 million to $5 billion in assets, joins as chief product officer. Aaron Schnarch, the former CEO of Coinbase Custody, is now an executive director. Other appointees come from Anchorage Digital, HSBC, Broadridge Financial, and Maple Finance.
Whether this shift will be enough to change Compound’s trajectory remains unclear. Institutional adoption has been slow, and competition is intense. But the move signals that the protocol is willing to change direction and spend serious money to make it happen.