The Complete Guide to Morpho

Morpho is a decentralized lending protocol on Ethereum, Base and other EVM networks. It started in 2022 as the Morpho Optimizer, a layer on top of Aave and Compound that improved their rates. In January 2024 it launched Morpho Blue, a standalone, permissionless lending primitive that holds its own liquidity. The Optimizers have since been deprecated, per the Morpho docs. In 2026 Morpho added Midnight, a separate set of fixed-rate markets.

Shared lending pools such as Aave list many assets in one pool, and governance sets the risk parameters for all of them. Morpho Blue takes a different approach. Each market pairs one loan asset with one collateral asset, has fixed parameters and is isolated from every other market. Anyone can create one. This keeps the core protocol small and pushes risk decisions to market creators and vault curators.

In size, Morpho is second only to Aave in DeFi lending. On November 10, 2026, DefiLlama counted $10.9 billion on Morpho, of which $10.8 billion on Morpho Blue and $166 million on Midnight. As DefiLlama does for every lending protocol, that TVL excludes the $5.62 billion already lent out on Morpho Blue. Ethereum ($4.82 billion) and Base ($4.23 billion) hold most of it, across 45 networks listed. Users paid $27 million in interest and fees to Morpho Blue over the 30 days to November 10, 2026.

Morpho Blue is the step from a lending optimizer to a lending infrastructure layer. It is a permissionless, immutable and minimal lending protocol. Anyone can create an isolated lending market with custom parameters.

On most lending platforms, a DAO must approve each new asset and its parameters. On Morpho Blue, market creation is permissionless. Anyone can deploy a market by choosing five parameters: the loan asset, the collateral asset, the oracle, the liquidation loan-to-value ratio (LLTV) and the interest rate model (IRM). Governance only maintains the short lists of approved LLTV values and IRMs that a market can pick from.

Morpho Blue 市场参数

Why this matters: Morpho Blue's core contract, Morpho.sol, is 557 lines long including comments (GitHub, November 10, 2026), and it cannot be upgraded. A small, fixed codebase is easier to audit and has a smaller attack surface than a large upgradable one. The trade-off is that risk management moves out of the core protocol and onto market creators and vault curators.

Morpho 在不同时期使用过两种不同的机制。最初的 Optimizer 在 Aave 和 Compound 之上以点对点方式撮合贷款人和借款人。当前的协议 Morpho Blue 则仅根据利用率在每个独立市场内设定利率。以下是每个步骤的工作方式，以及它属于哪个版本。.

Rate Example (Morpho Blue)

In a Morpho Blue market, all interest paid by borrowers goes to lenders, minus any protocol fee set by governance (the fee switch is capped at 25% of interest, per the Morpho docs). If borrowers pay 5.0% and 90% of the supplied assets are borrowed, lenders earn about 4.5% (5.0% multiplied by 90% utilization). The gap between the two rates is idle liquidity, not a spread kept by the protocol. This is an illustration, not a quote of live rates. For a real figure: on November 10, 2026, the Steakhouse USDC vault on Ethereum paid 4.80% (see the vault table below).

无内置利差

All interest paid by borrowers goes to lenders, minus any protocol fee set by governance. Whether a market's rate beats a shared pool depends on its utilization and demand, not on a fixed advantage.

无锁定

Lenders can withdraw at any time, as long as the market has enough unborrowed liquidity. There is no lock-up period, but a heavily borrowed market can delay withdrawals.

资本效率

Because each market is isolated, a well-understood pair (for example wstETH against WETH) can use a higher liquidation LTV than a shared pool would allow, which raises capital efficiency for borrowers.

无许可市场

任何人都可以通过选择五个参数在 Morpho Blue 上创建借贷市场，而无需等待治理投票。只有 LLTV 和利率模型必须来自治理批准的列表。.

极简 & 不可变

Morpho Blue's core contract is 557 lines of Solidity including comments. It is immutable: there is no upgrade path, and governance cannot change how existing markets work. Its powers are limited to the fee switch, the fee recipient and adding approved LLTVs and interest rate models, per the Morpho docs.

可组合基础设施

Morpho Blue 是一个基础层，其他协议和资金库都在其上构建。Morpho Vaults 以及使用 Morpho 市场的第三方产品就是例子。.

Morpho Vaults（最初称为 MetaMorpho）是构建在 Morpho Blue 之上的精选借贷金库。策展人选择金库可以使用的市场，并为每个市场设定上限。存款人通过单次存款即可获得多个市场的敞口。.

Instead of selecting individual Morpho Blue markets and managing the exposure yourself, you can deposit into a vault run by a risk curator such as Gauntlet, Steakhouse Financial or Re7. The curator allocates deposits across its chosen markets within the risk limits it has set. Coinstancy, which publishes this guide, takes a different route: Dollar Savings pays a fixed 7.50% APY on USDC, the rate currently in force, which may be revised. It is custodial: your USDC first enters a multisignature wallet operated by Coinstancy, which then deploys it into on-chain strategies, and interest accrues every second and is automatically reinvested.

Examples of Morpho Vault curators include Gauntlet, Steakhouse Financial, Re7 and Block Analitica. Each has its own risk appetite and strategy, so review the vault's markets, caps and fee on the Morpho app before depositing. Morpho now ships a second generation of vaults, Vault V2. Its vaults can allocate through adapters, and curators can charge a performance fee of up to 50% of the interest earned and a management fee of up to 5% a year, per the Morpho docs. Those are caps, not typical fees: the fee a vault actually charges is shown on its page, and the APYs below are what depositors received after it.

Largest Morpho Stablecoin Vaults on November 10, 2026

The table shows the APY and the 30-day average of the largest Morpho USDC and USDT vaults on Ethereum and Base, from the DefiLlama Yields dataset on November 10, 2026. Two vaults with the same curator can pay different rates, because they lend to different markets. This is a dated snapshot: the live figures are on app.morpho.org.

None of the Morpho vaults above paid reward tokens on November 10, 2026; their APY came from borrower interest. Vaults that add MORPHO or other rewards show a higher headline rate that can stop when the program ends. Our Beefy guide explains how aggregators build on Morpho vaults.

Morpho Blue rates are variable: they move with each market's utilization. Midnight is Morpho's separate, noncustodial protocol for fixed-rate lending, per the Morpho docs. Each Midnight market has a maturity date and from 1 to 128 collateral assets, each with its own oracle and liquidation LTV, all fixed when the market is created. Market creation is permissionless, as on Morpho Blue.

Instead of a rate, Midnight trades units: each unit repays one loan token at maturity. Lenders buy units, borrowers sell them, and the price sets the fixed rate. In the docs' example, buying one unit for 0.95 USDC earns 5.26% to maturity, which is 10.53% APR if maturity is six months away and 5.26% APR if it is a year away. Since October 9, 2026, the Morpho app quotes Midnight rates as APR rather than APY, so rates recorded before that date are not comparable. A lender who wants out before maturity sells units at the market price, which can be lower than the purchase price.

Midnight is still small next to the variable-rate markets. On November 10, 2026, it held $166 million with $92 million borrowed, and its users paid $531,759 in fees over 30 days, against $27 million on Morpho Blue, per DefiLlama. Its contracts are newer: their audits date from 2026 (see Sources).

以下是在 Morpho Blue 上供应和借款的分步指南。您需要一个 Web3 钱包以及一些该网络的 gas 代币用于支付交易费用。.

MORPHO 是 Morpho 协议的治理代币。由于核心的 Morpho Blue 合约本身无法更改，持有者就治理仍可控制的决策进行投票。.

How does Morpho compare with the other large lending protocols, and with Coinstancy? The first table gives, for each one, the TVL, the amount lent out to borrowers, the supply APY of its main USDC product on November 10, 2026 with the 30-day average, and the fees its users paid over 30 days, all from DefiLlama, plus custody, lock-up and minimum deposit. For a narrower comparison, see our Aave vs Compound vs Morpho guide and the Aave vs Morpho page.

How We Compared

Each platform is described on the same criteria: rate and how it is set, size, custody, lock-up, minimum deposit, fees and complexity. Third-party figures come from DefiLlama on November 10, 2026; protocol facts come from each project's documentation (see Sources). Coinstancy publishes this guide and is listed first because it is our product, not because of an independent ranking.

What the Comparison Shows

• Morpho is the second-largest lending protocol by TVL and by active loans, behind Aave V3. Its users paid $27 million in fees over 30 days, about three quarters of Aave V3's $38 million and far ahead of SparkLend, Kamino and Compound.
• On USDC, the large curated Morpho vaults paid more than Aave V3 and Compound V3 on Ethereum that day (4.80% against 3.73% and 3.15%), and Kamino on Solana paid more again (5.87%). One day's gap is not a rule: compare 30-day averages, which were closer.
• Rates also differ by network: Aave V3 paid 7.07% on USDC on Base, including 1.64% in reward tokens, against 5.00% for the largest Morpho USDC vault there.
• Spark's savings rate is set by Sky governance; Morpho, Aave, Compound and Kamino rates follow utilization. Coinstancy's figure is a fixed rate set by Coinstancy, currently in force and subject to revision.

Features at a Glance

Morpho Blue 已通过审计和形式化验证，但它是一个 DeFi 借贷协议，并带有随之而来的风险。以下是主要的安全措施以及仍然存在的风险。.