Apollo Global Management Inc., a giant in traditional finance, has announced a cooperation deal with Morpho, a decentralized lending platform, to secure a notable stake in its operations and enhance its blockchain lending capabilities. This partnership was disclosed by the Morpho Association on Friday.

Apollo plans to purchase up to 90 million governance tokens for Morpho over the next four years, which will account for approximately 9% of the total MORPHO supply of 1 billion tokens. According to the Morpho Association, their agreement allows Apollo to acquire these tokens through various means, including market purchases and OTC transactions, while capping ownership at 90 million MORPHO tokens over 48 months with certain restrictions on transfers and trading.

The announcement led to a substantial 17.8% increase in the Morpho token price over the weekend, rising from $1.12 to $1.32, as reported by CoinGecko. However, it’s important to note that the token’s value has decreased by 38% over the past year amid general market declines.

Morpho is recognized as the sixth-largest DeFi protocol by total assets locked, holding $5.8 billion, and primarily focuses on providing lending markets and curated investment vaults.

Moreover, this partnership marks another strategic alliance for Morpho, which has seen a series of collaborations recently, including an association with Bitwise to manage curated vaults offering high yields.

Apollo has been increasing its involvement in the cryptocurrency sector, having previously collaborated with Coinbase to devise stablecoin credit strategies.