Ethereum-based decentralized finance (DeFi) lending protocol Fira said on Tuesday it was launching with around $450 million in deposits, highlighting demand for fixed-rate onchain credit.
Fira said the protocol’s fixed-rate loan marketplace allows users to lock in borrowing costs and loan returns for specific periods, structuring loans by maturity dates rather than usage-based variable interest rates, according to an announcement shared with Cointelegraph.
The fixed-rate model differs from most DeFi lending protocols, where borrowers cannot lock in financing costs and lenders cannot predict returns, making long-term DeFi loans less predictable. Fira’s says its model organizes markets by maturity and determines interest rates based on the mechanics of supply and demand, replacing utilization algorithms that change based on lending activity.
Fira said the project aims to create a more predictable onchain lending market by introducing yield curves and specific maturities, features that are standard in customary fixed-income markets but sporadic in DeFi.
Fira is not the first DeFi lending protocol based on fixed-rate credit. Other protocols with a similar structure include Notional Finance, IPOR and Termin Finance.
The liquidity associated with Euler moved to Fira
Fira said it debuted with $450 million in deposits that were “moved” from users of Euler Finance’s modular lending platform in a pre-launch phase that began on Jan. 8, Pete Siegel, chief financial officer at Fira, told Cointelegraph.
“Fira was launched in January. It opened with the first marketplace called UZR, which allowed about a thousand users who were already using Euler, as part of the product available on Euler, to migrate their assets at a fixed rate.”
Siegel said deposits reflect user interest in fixed-rate lending products.
Currently DefiLlama can be seen Fira with about $451.6 million in total value locked on Ethereum compared to about $25.3 billion for Aave, the largest lending protocol in the industry.
Related: Maestro launches a mining-backed Bitcoin lending market for institutions
Fira says its intelligent contracts have passed six independent security audits conducted by Sherlock, Spearbit through Cantina, Hexens and yAudit between November 2025 and early 2026.
Fira’s bug bounty program through Sherlock offers bounties worth up to $500,000 to users who find critical vulnerabilities in intelligent contracts based on the open-source Ethereum protocol.
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