The market enables holders of GromaCoin (GRO), a tokenized share in the Groma Real Estate Trust, a multifamily apartment REIT with over $150 million in ecosystem value, to borrow stablecoins against their tokens through institutional-grade infrastructure. Lenders deposit USDC into a Birch Hill vault built leveraging Yearn and Morpho’s infrastructure, earning yield from borrowers posting real estate-backed collateral.

This is the first time tokenized REIT equity has been used as collateral in a programmatic, whitelisted onchain lending market with institutional risk management and onchain controls. It represents what we believe is the natural next step for real world assets: moving from static tokenization to composable, productive capital.

Source: Groma

Why Now? Tokenized real world assets have crossed $16 billion in onchain value globally (DeFiLlama), but most tokenized real estate today sits idle, held in static digital wallets. There is not enough diversity to put assets to work at scale for institutional holders.

Birch Hill’s partnership with Groma changes the equation. By combining Groma’s vertically integrated real estate platform and Birch Hill’s risk management and compliance layers, we are creating the first real estate equity lending market that couples verifiable onchain custody and offchain yield generation. The implications extend beyond a single vault. When tokenized REIT equity can serve as reliable lending collateral, thanks to transparent NAV reporting, programmatic risk parameters, and institutional liquidity infrastructure, it sets the stage to expand tokenized equity lending markets for structured real estate broadly.

What is Groma? Groma is a vertically integrated real estate company that owns and operates multifamily apartment properties, primarily small to mid-sized buildings in dense urban cores. The company has built proprietary technology, including an AI property manager called “Grobot”, to efficiently acquire, renovate, and manage Groma assets, opening up a historically overlooked $2T+ asset class to institutional investors.

GromaCoin is a tokenized share in the Groma Real Estate Trust, a Maryland corporation structured as a NAV REIT. As of Q4 2025, the trust reported a net asset value of $1.05 per token with an aggregate NAV of approximately $68 million across nearly 65 million tokens outstanding. The trust targets a total 8-12% yield profile, composed of 4–5% annual dividends and 4–7% appreciation. What makes Groma distinct in the tokenized asset landscape is asset-level ownership: Groma actually owns the real estate. The tokens are not synthetic exposure or wrapped ETF shares; they represent equity in a portfolio of physical apartment buildings with real tenants, real cash flows, and real operating history.

Source: Groma

How the Vault Works - The architecture utilizes four protocols and platforms, each responsible for a distinct function in the capital stack. Morpho provides the base lending protocol, a set of immutable smart contracts that define how collateral is posted, how loans are issued, and how liquidations are triggered. Morpho’s isolated market design means the Birch Hill X GRO lending market operates independently from other Morpho markets, with its own risk parameters and access controls.

Yearn Finance curates the USDC vault that supplies liquidity to the Groma market. Yearn’s role is capital allocation: directing depositor USDC into the Morpho market based on risk-adjusted yield, managing rebalancing, and providing the vault frontend. Yearn’s involvement signals that this market meets the risk and return standards of one of DeFi’s most established yield protocols.

Source: Birch Hill

Institutional Access Layer - Birch Hill provides the risk management, compliance, and institutional access layer. Birch Hill’s risk engine applies a collateral scoring framework, adapted from traditional real estate credit underwriting, to both establish proper risk metrics for the Groma market and create proper institutional liquidation infrastructure. Additionally, Birch Hill provides clients with institutional-grade analytics to meet both accounting and financial reporting requirements.

Groma provides the collateral asset itself, GromaCoin (GRO), along with the underlying real estate assets, operational management, data,, NAV reporting, and distribution infrastructure. Groma’s quarterly NAV process, including independent review quarterly by Cushman & Wakefield, provides the fundamental valuation anchor for the oracle price feed.

Open Liquidity, Permissioned Collateral - This market is deliberately asymmetric in its access model. The supply side, depositing USDC to earn yield, is open. Any stablecoin holder can provide liquidity to the vault without KYC, the same way any lender can participate in an existing peer-to-pool onchain market. This open supply side is critical: it allows the market to attract deep stablecoin liquidity from across the ecosystem, driving borrowing rates down over time as supply scales.

The collateral side is permissioned. Borrowers must hold GromaCoin acquired through compliant offerings (currently available to accredited and non-accredited investors in the US and elsewhere)) and are verified through Persona KYC before being allow-listed to post collateral. This ensures that every borrower in the market is a known, compliant holder of a regulated security.

This hybrid architecture–open liquidity, permissioned collateral–is the design that makes institutional real estate lending composable onchain. It preserves the capital efficiency and rate discovery of DeFi lending while enforcing the compliance controls that the underlying asset requires. Institutional capital gets regulatory clarity on the borrower side; stablecoin holders get transparent, real estate-backed yield on the supply side.

Source: Birch Hill

Phased Rollout - The partnership is rolling out in three phases. In Phase 1, launching in Q2 2026, Birch Hill deploys the initial Morpho market on Base with GromaCoin collateral and USDC lending. Yearn curates the USDC vault and manages allocation. GromaCorp engages as the first borrower, and Birch Hill sets the initial risk parameters, including interest rate model and loan-to-value limits.

Institutional Liquidity & Risk Infrastructure - One of the most critical questions in any real estate-collateralized lending market is: what happens if the borrower defaults? For tokenized real estate, this question is harder than it is for liquid crypto assets because there is no deep order book to sell into.

Birch Hill has assembled a multi-layered liquidation infrastructure to address this. Near-term, institutional partners such as institutional market makers provide dedicated liquidation capacity for the pilot. These are not automated bots; they are institutional counterparties with the balance sheet and mandate to absorb GromaCoin collateral at a discount and hold or redeem through Groma’s quarterly NAV process.

Longer term, Birch Hill is evaluating protocol-level RWA liquidation solutions to scale liquidation infrastructure as the market grows. The goal is a layered system: institutional liquidators for large positions and programmatic solutions for routine operations. Groma’s own redemption infrastructure provides a fundamental floor. The trust honors quarterly redemptions at NAV with a 10% quarterly capacity, and historical redemption rates have been under 1%, –a positive signal for collateral stability. While real estate values fluctuate, they have intrinsic underlying value, allowing for a deeper pool of buyers at a smaller discount than may be the case for non-asset-backed tokens.

The Birch Hill Platform - Groma is the first deployment in what Birch Hill is building as a broader tokenized credit platform. The thesis is straightforward: real world assets need real world credit infrastructure, and the onchain capital markets stack–lending protocols, vault curation, risk engines, and compliance tooling–is now mature enough to deliver institutional quality.

Proving out that onchain infrastructure today can support a REIT as lending collateral with transparent risk management and institutional liquidation will allow us to expand the asset universe tomorrow. Birch Hill is the infrastructure and risk management layer in this stack, and our work with Groma is that proof of concept.

Source: Birch Hill

Looking Ahead - This partnership is in active build and integration. The technical workstreams, oracle integration for onchain NAV reporting, dividend distribution mechanics for tokens posted as collateral, and smart contract deployment are being finalized by engineering teams at Birch Hill and Groma.

We expect to share more detail on market parameters and vault details as the deployment progresses. For Birch Hill, this is the beginning of a new asset class in onchain credit. For Groma, it is the next step in making real estate composable.

We believe the best version of onchain finance is not a replacement for traditional capital markets, but a better implementation of them. Transparent risk parameters. Programmable compliance. Real assets. This is a first public implementation of what that looks like in practice.

Credit is the backbone of the global financial system. It is how companies fund growth, how real estate gets built, how infrastructure gets financed. It is a $300+ trillion market and it is already moving onchain.

This adoption is not because blockchain is novel, but because it is better. Blockchains and the capital market stack built on its rail offer: (1) Real-time settlement, (2) Programmable risk parameters, (3) Transparent collateral, and (4) Immutable audit trails. The efficiency gains are not theoretical. They are structural.

Yet, with all the progress this industry has made since the earliest days of DeFi Summer, our goal of institutional adoption has not yet been achieved. Simply put, institutional capital has not shown up.

They see the opportunity onchain, but the infrastructure is not built for them. Most of what exists today was designed and optimized for crypto-native users chasing yield. That works for the earliest adopters of a nascent technology, but it does not scale to a pension fund, an RIA, or a family office with fiduciary obligations and compliance requirements. That infrastructure does not exist within a vertically-integrated, institutional-grade stack. This is what we set out to build.

Birch Hill is an institutional credit infrastructure company, designed to bridge the gaps that separate TradFi capital and onchain efficiency. We curate lending strategies through an institutional-grade risk and compliance engine that prioritizes capital preservation over yield chasing.

We are not aggregating DeFi yields. We are building the underwriting discipline, risk monitoring, and governance frameworks that let institutions actually participate in onchain credit markets.

Since closing our round, we have onboarded as a new institutionally focused curator on Morpho, with plans to launch our first vaults in Q1 and expand to additional platforms thereafter.

Regardless of chain, protocol or strategy, our process remains the same. Our Collateral Risk Framework provides real-time monitoring of collateral quality, liquidity conditions, and pricing integrity - paired with auditable decision trails for regulatory and client reporting. This is about building financial infrastructure that works for the largest pools of capital in the world. The capital will follow when the infrastructure meets them where they are.

Our team has spent years on both sides. Bhavin originated structured credit at Goldman Sachs and invested at Cerberus before transitioning to digital assets at 10T Holdings. Jack and Connor built risk systems on BlackRock’s Aladdin platform, infrastructure managing over $10 trillion, before researching onchain lending protocols at what is now Birch Hill Labs.

We have seen how institutional capital moves. We have seen what is missing onchain. Birch Hill is the bridge. To everyone who backed us early to get here today, thank you. We are just getting started.

Bhavin, Jack, and Connor

Press Coverage:

The Block - link

BusinessWire - link

On The Brink Podcast:

That world is reaching its ceiling. Thus, the success condition for digital asset technology is not growing the crypto-native population; it is enabling adoption at scale, where blockchains become invisible plumbing rather than a product. Crypto as a siloed industry must give way to digital assets as embedded infrastructure. True adoption means institutions and their customers are using blockchain without ever knowing it.

Birch Hill Strategy For 2026

To align with this shift, we are refocusing our roadmap around our core strengths. We will no longer be launching the Benchmark protocol on MegaETH. We believe that wrapping existing DeFi primitives is not where we create the most value. Rather, we are focusing our energy where the enduring, massive wins reside: embedding into the real world economy.

Today, we are formally introducing Birch Hill Solutions. Our mission is focused on serving institutional clients across an increasingly complex multi-chain landscape. We are taking a unique approach, focusing our efforts on mid-size traditional financial institutions and non crypto public companies, the “middle” of global finance that, in our view, has been largely ignored.

The Bridge to Onchain Finance

Birch Hill Solutions acts as the bridge to bring these entities onchain. We help them navigate:

• Complex Tokenization: Moving beyond the hype to implement real-world asset (RWA) frameworks built on trustless, transparent, internet capital markets.

• Institutional Onboarding: Providing the policy, controls, and reporting layers that allow traditional capital to interact with decentralized rails.

• Risk and Policy: Translating DeFi primitives into familiar, compliant vehicles that meet the mandates of U.S. public company boards and U.S. institutional allocators.

We are already executing on this vision through several strategic initiatives:

• For Asset Managers: We are helping transition institutional income & credit portfolios onto onchain rails to internalize servicing spreads and automate covenant monitoring. By tokenizing LP interests and using them as collateral for credit facilities, we enable managers to unlock liquidity and amplify equity returns while maintaining their existing credit discipline.

• For Consumer Brands & Public Companies: We are creating low risk entry points into the digital ecosystem by tokenizing real world assets. Beyond just marketing / brand engagement, we provide a tailored roadmap for modernizing treasury operations. We help transition institutions from traditional cash management to stablecoin infrastructure held in qualified custody.

• For Protocol Treasuries: We structure capital efficient strategies that transform idle native tokens into productive collateral. By liquid staking and borrowing against these assets to deploy into RWAs, we help protocols generate institutional grade yield & unlock stablecoin liquidity while preserving their long term exposure.

Rooted in First Principles

The foundation for Solutions is rooted in our careers spent at the intersection of traditional and decentralized finance. From my time at Goldman Sachs originating CMBS, to Connor & Jack’s work at BlackRock on risk systems, we feel the time is now for the digital asset space to mature. We seek to bridge the sophistication of the traditional financial world with the powerful, cost-effective infrastructure that blockchain and digital assets enable.

In our lifetimes, we have been witness to several credit cycles, and the subsequent responses that governments and traditional finance took to standardize risk and avoid further contagion. This year, on October 10th, we witnessed another extraordinary series of liquidation events in DeFi. In the aftermath, we have concluded that DeFi has reached a similar point of maturity where its primitives require standardization to mitigate risks: transparent collateral, programmatic liquidations, and open state, are ready to serve as backend infrastructure for the financial world.

We are building for businesses and institutions that need: faster settlement, global reach, and programmable money. Birch Hill Solutions is how we deliver on that mission.

Bhavin, Connor, and Jack

This post is for informational purposes only. Birch Hill does not custody assets or provide investment advice. Certain products may be available only to KYC-approved counterparties.

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The decentralized finance landscape has matured significantly over the past four years. What began as experimental protocols has evolved into battle-tested infrastructure capable of supporting institutional capital allocation. Public companies and large allocators now hold roughly five percent of total circulating digital assets. Post GENIUS, as stablecoins trend toward cash equivalent treatment and qualified custody rails connect to DeFi, the constraint is no longer access. It is policy, controls, and reporting. Birch Hill is launching at this critical inflection point, where primitives have proven they are now ready to meet institutional demand.

Two distinct generations of lending protocols exist. First-generation platforms like Aave and Compound established the foundational mechanics: programmatic interest rates, overcollateralization, and automated liquidations. They proved that lending could operate transparently on-chain, surviving multiple market cycles and stress events. The second generation advanced risk management and reshaped who the major actors are and how protocols operate, once the infrastructure and building blocks were battle-tested. Morpho delivered superior capital efficiency with isolated lending pools while maintaining a strong security record through extensive audits. Euler pushed permissionless market creation and, after a significant exploit in March 2023, achieved full recovery and returned with hardened security practices and more than $2 billion in TVL. Maple brought institutional underwriting standards to on-chain credit, weathered 2022 defaults, strengthened credit underwriting, and has grown to more than $3 billion in TVL. The lessons are consistent: discipline matters, parameters are the product, oracle selection matters, and isolation prevents contagion.

This evolution mirrors the journey of traditional finance in the real estate credit space. By the time I joined Goldman in 2018 to originate CMBS in the Real Estate Financing Group, the market had developed standardized methods for rating collateral and structuring risk to avoid another 2008-style contagion event. DeFi protocols have converged on similar principles: explicit liquidation thresholds, transparent collateral requirements, and programmatic risk management. Now, institutional allocators face a similar question: how do we access on-chain yields while maintaining the operational controls required by our mandates? The answer is a product that translates DeFi primitives into familiar vehicles while keeping assets at qualified custody, routing only to allow-listed venues, and providing complete audit trails.

Vaults represent this translation layer. By wrapping battle-tested lending protocols within institutional-grade operational frameworks, vaults enable systematic exposure to DeFi yields through professionally curated strategies. New launches like Morpho’s direct integration with Coinbase QC are examples of the institutional DeFi gates being lifted. As more entities adopt mandates to hold digital assets, traditional staking yields alone will not be sufficient.

How Birch Hill Differentiates

Birch Hill aims to contribute to the network of risk curators that help protocols employ best practices in treasury and allocation management. We analyze how mechanisms perform under stress and identify design choices that create durable risk management frameworks. Methodologically, we fuse asset-specific risk modeling, focused on principal-loss probability, with systematic protocol selection to decide allocations. We underwrite positions across liquidity, collateral quality, liquidation mechanics, oracle behavior under stress, and utilization dynamics, then size and rebalance positions based on real-time monitoring.

In parallel, we vet venues for smart contract risk, liquidation mechanics, oracle integrations, liquidity depth, incentive sustainability, governance controls, and operational resilience to ensure exposures are expressed on the safest, most efficient rails. While we opportunistically harvest incentives, our edge is the quantitative pairing of the right assets with the right venues, at the right size and cadence. That is what drives more durable, risk-adjusted yield as token rewards and treasury priorities inevitably shift.

Our structure is intended to align incentives between token holders, protocol operators, and asset managers. By owning and operating the key layers of the stack, from risk intelligence and protocol infrastructure to originating products, we internalize costs and capture multiple revenue streams from institutional capital flows. Years of advising protocols on mechanism design and token reward systems taught us that sustainable growth requires sustainable incentive structures, ones that benefit all stakeholders, not systems optimized for short-term extraction at the expense of protocol health or token value.

DeFi set out to solve trust through transparent, programmable systems, yet trust remains scarce across much of the industry. Our thesis is simple: alignment and transparency build durable businesses, and the market will select for these qualities as decisively as it selects for capital efficiency. Risk assessment informs protocol deployment, which strengthens vault curation, creating a compounding loop.

We believe the next phase of DeFi growth will be driven by institutional capital seeking systematic exposure to on-chain yields. This requires infrastructure that translates proven DeFi primitives into familiar products while maintaining the operational standards expected in traditional asset management. Birch Hill is combining battle-tested protocols, systematic risk management, and vertical integration across the DeFi stack. We provide institutions with a single point of access to on-chain yields that preserves capital, enables liquidity, and delivers transparency.

Birch Hill was named after the street I grew up on, to anchor us in first principles. From Goldman and BlackRock to Birch Hill, the lessons are the same. Good systems work because the rules are visible, the incentives align, and the discipline compounds.

Bhavin Vaid

CEO of Birch Hill Holdings

This post is for informational purposes only. Birch Hill does not custody assets or provide investment advice. Certain products may be available only to KYC-approved counterparties.