Compound V4 Update: Institutional Market Passed $60M In Deposits

Compound Foundation says the V4 build is on track, and the first live piece is already taking money. Its September report went up on the governance forum on October 12. It says the Institutional Market had passed $60 million in deposits and collateral by September 25. This Compound V4 update is the fourth monthly report under the V4 funding programme.

The same market had more than $18 million in USDC loans outstanding on that date. The Foundation labels both figures as September milestones rather than month-end balances.

Where the Compound V4 update says the build stands

September moved V4 from specification to implementation. Core product and technical specs are finished, and the first smart-contract code and reviews have started. An engineering offsite lined up the team on the core design and build order.

Some side work is further along. The Integration Kit is built and documented, though its outside security review and fixes continue before any client uses it. Partial liquidations are finished but have not rolled out on mainnet. Redirects from compound.finance to the new site are live, and the Foundation says existing positions were not affected.

The Institutional Market itself opened on September 8 as an R&D deployment. Its job is to test selected V4 features and gather feedback before the wider launch. A September 29 note in the report says borrowing demand grew nearly 10% that week. USDC suppliers were earning a 6.35% base rate then. Gate's integration through Gate Earn also went live during the month.

Rewards and the team

Legacy COMP reward claims opened through Merkl on September 10, with more than 106,900 COMP claimable. At the roughly $25 CoinGecko quoted on October 12, that stack is worth close to $2.7 million.

Staffing grew too. The engineering group went from one person to six during the third quarter. The Foundation is still hiring a Head of Protocol Engineering and one more smart-contract engineer. It also hired a fractional CFO, and it is recruiting People and HR support plus a Senior Communications Manager.

On costs, the Foundation reports two renegotiated contracts. Cactus agreed a renewal at one third lower annual cost with the same scope. Security providers offered renewal terms that cut comparable yearly costs by 17%.

What comes next for Compound V4

October's list is mostly more of the same. It names V4 implementation, code reviews and audit planning. It also names finishing the Integration Kit review and preparing the partial-liquidation rollout. The Foundation also plans to keep supporting Institutional Market users and to continue its Elixir recovery work with outside counsel.

The Foundation frames all of this as support for open, transparent and permissionless financial infrastructure that serves developers, institutions and end users. The funding terms behind the Compound V4 update have not changed. A 12-month operational review still applies, and the six-month Tier 1 integration period starts only after Growth Milestone 1 is triggered.

The Foundation's forum post gives the dates behind the Institutional Market numbers.

For scale beside this Compound V4 update, DefiLlama lists Compound V3 at about $1.46 billion in total value locked, down 4.6% over seven days. That figure covers the live protocol and not the V4 test market. This is a summary of a project report and not investment advice.