Morpho: defi protocols rating breakdown
Lending primitive · 42 chains
The best answer on this page to the upgradeability problem in lending: Morpho Blue is a deliberately minimal, immutable primitive with isolated markets, so neither the developers nor a governance vote can reach into your market and change its terms. $9.47bn across 42 chains, which is the widest deployment in DeFi lending.
The best answer on this page to the upgradeability problem in lending: Morpho Blue is a deliberately minimal, immutable primitive with isolated markets, so neither the developers nor a governance vote can reach into your market and change its terms. $9.47bn across 42 chains, which is the widest deployment in DeFi lending.
How the score is built
Each criterion is scored 0–10 and weighted. The median column is the middle score across every entry in this ranking, so a row reads as a position rather than a number.
| Criterion | What we measured | Weight | Score | Category median | Rank | Weighted gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Who can change the contract holding your money | nobody — market parameters are fixed at creation who can change a live market · sourced · 2026-08-27 · source | 32% | 9 | 6.5 | 2 of 8 | +0.80 |
| Track record, and who paid when it broke | — | 25% | 7 | 7.5 | 5 of 8 | -0.13 |
| Value secured | $9.47bn total value locked · sourced · 2026-08-27 · source | 20% | 9 | 8.5 | 3 of 8 | +0.10 |
| Can an outsider verify it? | — | 13% | 7 | 8 | 6 of 8 | -0.13 |
| Chains and integration | 42 chains · sourced · 2026-08-27 · source | 10% | 10 | 8 | 1 of 8 | +0.20 |
Measured 27 August 2026 · weights and method · decided by who can change the contract holding your money, worth +0.80 points against the median
Who can change the contract holding your money: 9/10
Sourced to each protocol’s own documentation: are the contracts immutable, upgradeable behind a timelock, or upgradeable by a multisig that can act immediately. If there is an emergency power — a pause, a freeze, a guardian — we record who holds it and how fast they can use it. Uniswap’s pool contracts cannot be upgraded at all. Most of this page can be changed by a vote, and some of it by a handful of signers.
Scored 9 of 10 against a category median of 6.5, which places it 2nd of 8 among defi protocols on this criterion. At a 32% weight that is 0.80 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 4.
Track record, and who paid when it broke: 7/10
Years of continuous operation holding real money, every incident with its date and amount, and whether users were made whole. Age alone is not evidence — plenty of protocols were old on the day they failed — but age combined with an unbroken record of not losing user funds is the strongest signal this category offers.
Scored 7 of 10 against a category median of 7.5, which places it 5th of 8 among defi protocols on this criterion. At a 25% weight that is 0.13 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 5.
Value secured: 9/10
Total value locked at a stated timestamp, and thirty days of protocol fees as evidence that the value is being used rather than parked. Scale matters here in a specific way: a protocol securing tens of billions has been a standing target for years and has not been taken.
Scored 9 of 10 against a category median of 8.5, which places it 3rd of 8 among defi protocols on this criterion. At a 20% weight that is 0.10 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 5.
Can an outsider verify it?: 7/10
Open-source contracts, published audits, public parameter and risk documentation, and whether the numbers a front end shows can be independently recomputed from public data. A protocol that publishes the formula behind its yield is making a checkable claim; one that publishes only the number is not.
Scored 7 of 10 against a category median of 8, which places it 6th of 8 among defi protocols on this criterion. At a 13% weight that is 0.13 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 9, the worst 6.
Chains and integration: 10/10
Chains with real deployments, and how deeply the protocol is used as infrastructure by others, from public data at a stated timestamp.
Scored 10 of 10 against a category median of 8, which places it 1st of 8 among defi protocols on this criterion. At a 10% weight that is 0.20 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 4.
Its nearest neighbours in this ranking
| # | Entry | Who can change the contract holding your money | How it differs |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Uniswap | 10 | Ahead by 1 on who can change the contract holding your money. |
| 2 | Aave | 6 | Behind by 3 on who can change the contract holding your money. |
| 4 | Lido | 5 | Behind by 4 on who can change the contract holding your money. |
| 5 | Sky (Maker) | 6 | Behind by 3 on who can change the contract holding your money. |
Questions about this score
What can nobody change on Morpho?
+
A live market's parameters: its collateral asset, loan asset, oracle and liquidation threshold are fixed when the market is created. Not the developers, not a governance vote, nobody. That is a stronger guarantee than any pooled lending protocol offers, and it applies to the primitive rather than to the vault you probably deposited into.
Does the immutable primitive protect vault depositors?
+
Partially, and it is important to be precise. It guarantees the market your money sits in cannot have its terms rewritten. It does not stop your curator from moving your capital into a different market you would not have chosen. Read the vault's allocations — they are published, and almost nobody reads them.