---
title: "About Merkl"
description: "Merkl is onchain distribution infrastructure used by stablecoin issuers, fintechs, exchanges and DeFi protocols to send yield, dividends and rewards to their users."
canonical: "https://app.merkl.xyz/about"
generated: "2026-09-18T10:29:50.765Z"
---

# About Merkl

Merkl is onchain distribution infrastructure. Stablecoin issuers, fintechs, exchanges, tokenized funds and DeFi protocols use it to pay yield, dividends and rewards to their users on any chain, without building and operating a distribution system of their own.

The Merkl App is the end user surface of that infrastructure. It lists every live reward opportunity Merkl distributes, shows what a wallet has earned across chains and protocols, and lets that wallet claim. Program managers create and run their own campaigns in Merkl Studio, and partners embed the same data in their own products through the Merkl API.

## What Merkl does

Merkl is good at two things. Indexing: knowing every position, holder, NAV and flow in real time, across every supported chain. Distribution: moving value to any address on any chain, reliably and at scale.

The part that is hard to replicate is reaching the real beneficial holder wallet. Merkl forwarders trace ownership through nested smart contracts, so a recipient is paid whether they hold an asset in their wallet or have deposited it into a lending market, a vault or a staking contract. A program manager describes who should be paid, and Merkl works out which wallets that actually means.

## Scale

Figures below are as of July 2026. Live platform counts are always available from the public API at https://api.merkl.xyz.

- **Distributed onchain**: $1.8B+
- **Companies**: 1000+
- **Chains**: 60+
- **Wallets paid**: 5M+
- **Monthly active users**: 200,000+

## Who uses Merkl

Stablecoin issuers and fintechs including Circle (USDC), Paxos (USDG), Ethena (USDe), Sky (USDS), SG-Forge (EURCV), Coinbase, Robinhood, Kraken and Deel.

DeFi protocols including Aave, Morpho, Uniswap, Euler, Curve and 1inch, and chains and ecosystems including Optimism, Plasma, World Chain and Robinhood Chain.

## How a distribution works

Merkl recomputes reward accrual roughly every two hours from indexed onchain state. The result is committed as one merkle root per chain, pushed onchain every two to eight hours depending on the chain.

Because there is a single root per chain, a recipient claims every reward they are owed on that chain in one transaction, and the cost per recipient stays flat as the recipient population grows. Merkl is non-custodial toward end users: users keep control of their assets and Merkl only processes claims.

## Fees

Claiming is free for end users aside from the gas they pay. Program managers pay a 3% maintenance fee on a standard distribution and 0.5% on an airdrop. Managed and bespoke programs are priced individually.

## The company

The Merkl App and the infrastructure behind it are built and operated by Angle Labs, Inc., headquartered in Paris, France. The team has been running onchain distributions since 2023.

- [Merkl website](https://merkl.xyz)
- [Merkl Studio](https://studio.merkl.xyz): create and run a distribution
- [Documentation](https://docs.merkl.xyz)
- [Blog](https://blog.merkl.xyz)
- [Contact Merkl](/contact)
- [Developer portal](/developers)