Decentralized lending protocol Morpho has officially deployed its fixed-rate, fixed-term lending protocol Midnight on Base, marking a significant expansion of its on‑chain credit infrastructure. The launch introduces an intent‑based peer‑to‑peer matching system that allows lenders and borrowers to negotiate loan terms directly, moving away from the variable, algorithm‑driven rates common in DeFi.
Midnight’s design was revealed through a white paper in May and is now live on the Base mainnet with initial support for cbBTC and USDC across multiple maturity dates. The rollout is deliberately narrow as part of a security‑first deployment, with plans to extend to additional blockchains over an unspecified timeline. The protocol operates alongside Morpho Blue, which continues to provide variable‑rate lending through isolated pools.
According to Morpho co‑founder and CEO Paul Frambot, fixed‑rate lending is essential for on‑chain markets to function like traditional credit markets. “Fixed‑rate lending is fundamental to how global credit markets operate,” Frambot said. “Without it, onchain markets remain incomplete.” Midnight addresses this gap by enabling participants to set their own interest rates, maturity dates, and counterparties, with positions represented as transferable assets that can be traded in secondary markets before maturity.
The launch arrives after Morpho’s $175 million funding round in June, led by Paradigm, a16z Crypto, and Ribbit Capital, with participation from Apollo Funds, Circle Ventures, VanEck, and others. The protocol now holds over $11 billion in deposits across its lending network, which is already used by institutions such as Coinbase, Kraken, Bitwise, and Société Générale’s SG Forge. While Coinbase’s on‑chain lending product already operates on Morpho Blue, the exchange has not yet committed to integrating Midnight.
Midnight’s architecture aims to solve liquidity fragmentation that has plagued previous fixed‑rate protocols by keeping capital productive in variable‑rate markets until a fixed‑rate offer is matched. Frambot emphasized that building fixed rates at the primitive level, with variable products layered on top, is a more robust approach than previous attempts that built fixed rates on floating‑rate systems.
