Meet Current: The First DeFi Moonshots Team

Main Takeaways

• The DeFi Moonshots Program backs a small number of teams each year building category-defining financial products on Sui, with up to $500K in growth incentives for each one, and hands-on engineering support.
• Current is the first selected project, bringing a capital efficiency and leverage layer to Sui DeFi through two products: ‘Multiply’ for one-click leveraged yield, and ‘Margin’ for directional leverage trading.
• Current’s design compounds value across the broader ecosystem, generating swap volume, stablecoin demand, and deeper utility across Sui DeFi.

Overview

Most DeFi innovation is incremental. Faster execution, deeper liquidity, tighter spreads. That progress matters, but it rarely changes how a market works. The DeFi Moonshots Program exists to answer a different question: what does it take to build something that doesn’t exist yet?

Launched earlier this year, Moonshots is an ultra-selective initiative backing teams developing financial products capable of reshaping their category. Around ten projects will be selected per year. Each receives up to $500K in growth incentives, direct collaboration with DeFi engineering specialists, audit credits, and coordinated go-to-market support.

Current is the first project selected, and what they’re building helps explain exactly why the program exists.

What Moonshots looks for, and what Current found

Moonshots is built for a specific kind of team: ones developing products that don’t yet exist, not better versions of what does. Structurally unique products that unlock new onchain capital and define a category rather than compete within one.

Sui's DeFi ecosystem has developed real depth: strong DEXs, liquid staking, shared liquidity infrastructure in DeepBook, and a growing base of yield-bearing assets. But, as Christophe Revault, CCO at Current, puts it: "One critical category was missing: a capital efficiency and leverage layer that could connect all these primitives and put idle yield-bearing assets to work."

“We knew we wanted to build the next-generation lending protocol, something far more complex than traditional borrow/lend, with atomic leveraged strategies that require everything to execute in a single transaction. That kind of protocol needs a high-performance L1 to work,” adds Revault. “When we looked at Sui, the tech was there, the ecosystem was growing, but the layer we wanted to build didn’t exist. Easy decision.”

How Current works

Current is a lending protocol designed as a leverage layer, with two products built on top: Multiply and Margin. Users can borrow against yield-bearing assets at scale, amplify those positions, or trade with directional leverage, all within Sui’s native execution model. 

Many assets on-chain generate yield, but most users aren't doing anything to make those positions more productive. Multiply opens up a way to do exactly that. “Instead of letting your money sit idle earning nothing, Current lets you put it to work and earn high yield," says Revault. "One click, higher returns."

The mechanics are simple: yield-bearing assets can often generate higher yield than their cost of borrowing, and leverage amplifies that opportunity. Multiply automates the whole sequence in one click, depositing, borrowing, and compounding the position in a single transaction. A feature called eMode enables higher leverage for correlated assets, like a liquid staking token and SUI, by recognizing their tighter shared risk profile. Multiply currently supports nine assets with rates ranging from 5% to 30%.

Margin is the second product, for directional leverage trading. Where Multiply amplifies yield on assets you’re already holding, Margin lets users take leveraged long or short positions onchain. It runs on the same underlying lending market, using flash loans to open and close positions in a single transaction, bringing onchain margin trading to Sui without the execution friction typically associated with it.

Why only Sui makes this possible

The one-click Multiply flow isn’t just a UX decision; it’s a technical one. Executing a flash loan, a swap, and a supply operation as a single atomic transaction requires a chain that can compose multiple operations into one. Sui’s Programmable Transaction Blocks (PTBs) do exactly that. On most other chains, this sequence would require multiple steps, with execution risk introduced at each one.

That technical fit was part of what drew the Current team to Sui. But the team is also building with the ecosystem’s trajectory in mind. Upcoming developments on Sui, such as Bitcoin as collateral through Hashi, native privacy features, and USDsui for free stablecoin transfers, all expand what Multiply can do and what assets it can support.

“A user will soon be able to deposit Bitcoin as collateral, borrow stablecoins, and Multiply into a yield-bearing position, with privacy, on a chain where stablecoin transfers are free,” said Revault. “That's not DeFi as it exists today.”

A growth engine for the ecosystem

Current isn’t building in isolation. Every Multiply position opened generates DEX swap volume. Every borrower creates stablecoin demand. Every liquid staking token deposited as collateral deepens its utility across the ecosystem.

“Current acts as a multiplier for the entire Sui DeFi ecosystem,” Revault says. “The more Current grows, the more value flows to every other protocol in the ecosystem.”

That interconnected design was central to the Moonshots selection. The program isn’t looking for growth that stays contained within a single protocol. It’s looking for products that pull the broader network forward, where success for one team translates to compounding value for the rest.

What it means to be a Moonshot

Being selected for the DeFi Moonshots Program is more than a funding milestone. “Honestly, we couldn’t be prouder or more grateful,” says Revault. "Being selected for such a competitive program, alongside some of the most ambitious builders in the Sui ecosystem, is a massive validation of what we’re building. It pushes us to move faster, onboard more assets, and make Sui the number one DeFi blockchain.”

The full $500K in Moonshots incentives backs that ambition directly. “It creates the best possible conditions for us to succeed fast,” says Revault. “The Moonshots incentives compress what would take 24 months organically into six.” 

Current is at current.finance. Go see what the first Moonshot looks like in practice.

Think you’re building a Moonshot?

The DeFi Moonshots Program accepts applications on a rolling basis. If you’re developing a novel financial primitive, a meaningful advance in capital efficiency, or a product capable of attracting net new capital and users to Sui, this program is for you.

Selection is intentionally limited to around ten projects per year. The program is for teams that have thought seriously about both the product and the business: what they’re building, how it ships, and what it becomes at scale.

Current is the first. It won’t be the last.

→ Apply to the DeFi Moonshots Program

Note: This content is for general educational and informational purposes only and should not be construed or relied upon as an endorsement or recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any asset, investment or financial product and does not constitute financial, legal, or tax advice.