Morpho Launches Fixed-Rate Midnight Protocol on Base

Most decentralized-finance lending markets price loans with rates that shift according to capital utilization, making funding costs and returns difficult to forecast. Morpho designed Midnight to complement Morpho Blue, its open-ended, variable-rate protocol, by embedding fixed rates and maturities at the protocol level. The offer-driven structure lets market participants set terms through competing bids, a model intended to make onchain credit more useful for institutions and companies managing interest-rate and duration risk.

Morpho publicly launched Midnight on the Base mainnet on July 21, 2026, initially offering USDC loans backed by cbBTC across multiple maturities. Lenders and borrowers can propose their own rates and terms instead of using a protocol-set utilization curve. The rollout follows Morpho’s $175 million funding round in June and builds on a lending network with more than $11 billion in deposits. Morpho did not disclose Midnight’s initial liquidity or loan volume.