MIP 87 - Crosschain Deployments Framework

Governance
1

This is a proposal to establish a framework for crosschain deployment of the Morpho Protocol. Unlike most lending markets, Morpho is permissionless infrastructure where anyone can set up lend/borrow pairs or vaults, and so is suitable for a wide deployment strategy. That said, frontend support and growth efforts like MORPHO rewards are limited resources which cannot be deployed everywhere.

Therefore, the Morpho Association proposes to deploy only the protocol code on a large number of chains, including but not limited to:

  • Polygon POS
  • Avalanche
  • Hyperliquid
  • BNB Chain
  • Unichain
  • WorldChain
  • Monad
  • Arbitrum
  • Optimism
  • Scroll
  • Linea
  • Mantle
  • Mode L2
  • X Layer
  • Flow
  • Gnosis Chain

These chains will not be supported in the frontend or receive MORPHO rewards. Instead, the DAO can encourage independent contributors to build on top of the Morpho Protocol in a similar manner to Moonwell, which has achieved a combined TVL of over $200M in its Morpho vaults on Base. These parties would have their own brands and business models, and could independently pursue grants on various chains to help drive their growth. They could be eligible for MORPHO grants in the next round of the Morpho grants program, but may also be considered sooner than this on a case by case basis separately from the limited-scope grants pilot program which is intended primarily for general-purpose tooling around the Morpho Protocol.

In some cases, these “tier two” deployments could be upgraded to core deployments with frontend support and MORPHO rewards in the future, once adequate resources are available and if the DAO judges that the opportunity is compelling.

If this proposal is passed, the Morpho DAO will accept ownership of all protocol instances deployed by the Morpho Association under this framework, including an initial batch and future deployments on a rolling basis.

20 Likes
2

This proposal seems well-aligned with Morpho’s permissionless ethos, making the expansion to multiple ecosystems a natural step. When the time comes, it might be worth considering clearly defining the guidelines for upgrading “tier two” deployments and outlining the DAO’s responsibilities in advance.

3 Likes
3

We strongly support this proposal.

New chains should be able to request a Morpho deployment through a simple governance vote, gated by a minimum MORPHO token holding requirement or coming from a recognized delegate. We have seen strong demand for new and growing chains to have core DeFi primitives like Morpho. We expect that there are many chains that will want to be added to this initial deployment list. Full deployments with Morpho Foundation frontend inclusion should have a clear evaluation framework.

We would call on community members to submit open-source versions of basic frontends and relevant off-chain infrastructure in upcoming grants rounds to enable easy deployment and further ecosystem development.

With a verified deployment from the DAO and the ability to easily create a “white-label” front-end dapp for the protocol, we can see Morpho becoming ubiquitous infrastructure across chains similar to Uniswap.

2 Likes
4

Strongly support this proposal!

This proposal enables large protocols on L2 and alt L1s to leverage Morpho for creating borrowable “protocol-owned liquidity” markets. Isolated lending’s unique risk containment allows other DeFi protocol teams to precisely control exposure, making Morpho an attractive infrastructure for strategic liquidity management.

The lack of initial backend API infrastructure and frontends across these chains presents a strategic opportunity for community developers to create alternative solutions. By incentivizing builders through the grant program, we can diversify and strengthen Morpho’s foundational infrastructure beyond Morpho Labs’ current API offerings.

GMorpho to all EVM

4 Likes
5

Great proposal! Please also consider add Zircuit as the first batch of deployment. Zircuit currently has $2.5B in staking contract. Would be compelling and promising to deploy Morpho codes on.

6

Great proposal! Please also consider add Celo Chain to the first batch of deployments!

It’s EVM-compatible, low fees, fast transactions, and strong adoption in real-world payments and stablecoins. Perfect fit for scalable DeFi use cases!

7

We live in a crosschain world and horizontal scalability is important. I entrust the Morpho team to best determine where to deploy and in what priority.

8

This a good proposal and I think priority should be weighted using TVL on the chain as a start and also chains that look promising. The ideal of having individual contributors handle managing it also means less work on the Morpho core team.

9

Great proposal. Please also consider adding Lisk in the first batch of deployments.

Lisk is part of the OP Superchain and focused on growing Ethereum adoption in emerging markets in Africa and South East Asia, providing access to a differentiated user base in attractive and fast growing markets that have some of the highest crypto and DeFi adoption rates (such as Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa and Indonesia). Since our Mainnet launch in mid-November we have been one of the fastest growing L2s and currently rank 6th in daily activity.

10

This type of expansion is exactly what the Morpho ecosystem needs. The ability to build liquidity on so many chains is both an investment in up and coming ecosystems as well as a place for curators and passive depositors to grow their presence and build even more sustainable revenue streams. As independent builders developing tooling that integrates and expands Morpho’s vault capabilities, our team would be excited to support this direction.

11

One point of technical clarification — at this time, the Morpho Protocol should be deployed only on chains that have a Gnosis Safe deployment, as until a full crosschain governance system is implemented (my main design project at the moment!) a Gnosis Safe must be the “owner” in control of the fee switch.

This does not have to be a canonical deployment on the Safe UI, it can also use a recognized service provider like Protofire.

2 Likes
12

We broadly support the proposed cross-chain deployment framework.

  • By focusing the Morpho team’s core efforts on protocol development, while leaving frontend builds and incentive layers to independent contributors, this approach can optimize Morpho’s resource distribution.
  • We like the plan to start deployments in “tier two” mode, then gradually allocate more support and resources as certain chains demonstrate potential.
  • This measured strategy encourages innovation by diversifying user experiences and brands.

That said, we would appreciate more clarity on the points below.

  1. Could you provide rough cost estimates—both financial and in person-months—for deploying the protocol code and frontend support on additional chains?
    Having these figures would help us assess the feasibility and rationale of adopting this framework.

  2. Is there a realistic approach to streamline deployments across multiple chains rather than tackling each one individually?
    We are aware of the Oku proposal as one such idea. If there are other approaches you have considered or are currently evaluating, could you please share what alternatives were explored and offer insight into why certain options were favored or ruled out?

  3. For operators like Moonwell that build frontends on top of the Morpho protocol, what viable business models can they pursue?
    Given certain constraints, it might be faster and more cost-effective for the core team to directly budget for and hire developers rather than relying on community-driven solutions. We are not questioning the core purpose of the proposed framework, but rather seeking guidance on the scalability of this community-led approach.

2 Likes
13

good looks. "These chains will not be supported in the frontend or receive MORPHO rewards. Instead, the DAO can encourage independent contributors to build on top of the Morpho Protocol in a similar manner to Moonwell, which has achieved a combined TVL of over $200M in its Morpho vaults on Base. These parties would have their own brands and business models, and could independently pursue grants on various chains to help drive their growth. " is awesome

1 Like
14

We voted in favour of this proposal as we agree that it’s a smart way to scale Morpho organically through independent contributors without overextending resources, and clearly aligns with Morpho’s permissionless design and ethos.

Have you thought about how to actively encourage independent contributors to build on these new deployments? Beyond the grants program, are there plans to provide documentation, tooling, or support to make it easier for builders to get started?

Looking forward to see these deployments materialise!

2 Likes
15

Voted in favour since we want to see the best protocols on each chain build on top of Morpho core infrastructure.

Would be great to have a breakdown, with links to relevant GitHub repositories, of which components are deployed and maintained by the Morpho Association. From this proposal is clear that core contracts will be deployed and the frontend left to others to build but what about adjacent services, like indexing, governance infra etc.?

18

Thanks all for your comments and questions. Starting with @Tane :

  1. Pure code deployment has a low overhead, once the scripts are completed it doesn’t substantially increase the workload to add one more chain (just need gas for deployments on the relevant networks). It is realistic to accomplish the first batch of deployments in January, I will share a more precise timeline once it is available after the New Year.

Backend indexing is the major challenge, which is one reason why I have been supportive of the Oku proposal and am excited by Moonwell’s plan to build on Morpho on Ink and Unichain. I anticipate that it will take more than three months before the frontend + backend developed by the Morpho Association are ready to scale to support non-core deployments.

  1. As noted above, the deployment scripts can be readily used for multiple chains once finalized. However, someone must run frontend and backend services for users to access the protocol. My view is that ideally we see a mix of established ecosystem actors like Moonwell, service providers like GFX, and newcomers building on the Morpho stack on various chains. I believe there is quite a bit of interest in using the Morpho stack in a similar manner to Moonwell by existing and emerging lending protocol teams.

  2. Moonwell not only operates a frontend but also directly owns Morpho vaults and collaborate with risk curators (Block Analitica and B Protocol) on their operation. I think this is a strong model that will be emulated by other lending protocols, including both new and existing projects. Other possible revenue models include charging a listing fee to vault curators, and taking a small fee from user actions such as deposit/withdrawal from vaults or opening/closing borrowing positions.

More broadly, the goal of this proposal is not only technical. A diversity of opinionated interfaces operated by independent teams or DAOs pursuing their own profits on a shared stack has great benefits for protocol growth and decentralization.

Addressing @Avantgarde 's question:

Have you thought about how to actively encourage independent contributors to build on these new deployments? Beyond the grants program, are there plans to provide documentation, tooling, or support to make it easier for builders to get started?

Yes, a few things worth keeping in mind here:

  1. Much like Moonwell, there are teams/DAOs with experience in the lending space who may be able to strengthen their operations by using the Morpho stack. These are ideal candidates, who likely already possess the engineering capabilities to add Morpho support to their frontends (likely not as comprehensive as the UI hosted by the Morpho Association, but instead only showing the pools/vaults associated with the team/DAO in question, which is simpler to implement)
  2. The Oku proposal will provide a widely available UI that will make it easy for curators to expand crosschain
  3. Naturally this initiative will provide pressure to optimize documentation and other tooling, which can be supplemented with activities like technical office hours as the Morpho developer ecosystem grows

And finally @nemoventures :

Would be great to have a breakdown, with links to relevant GitHub repositories, of which components are deployed and maintained by the Morpho Association. From this proposal is clear that core contracts will be deployed and the frontend left to others to build but what about adjacent services, like indexing, governance infra etc.?

The following repositories will be in scope for the lightweight deployments framework:

  • morpho-blue: Morpho Blue, the most secure, efficient and flexible lending protocol on Ethereum.
  • morpho-blue-irm: Interest Rate Models that can be used by Morpho Blue.
  • morpho-blue-oracles: Oracles that can be used by Morpho Blue.
  • metamorpho: A protocol for noncustodial risk management on top of Morpho Blue based on the ERC4626 standard.
  • public-allocator: A contract to reallocate liquidity across markets.
  • morpho-blue-bundlers: Contract to easily batch actions into one single transaction for an EOA.

Note that this does not include the universal rewards distributor that handles MORPHO rewards, which is an ownable contract. Teams wishing to distribute rewards could deploy their own instance, provided that they have sufficient indexing capacity to do so.

For now governance is simple (DAO multisig), my core project as Governance Lead is the design and implementation of full crosschain token governance. More to come on this in the New Year.

6 Likes
19

Thanks for the clarification!

1 Like
20

The first batch of new deployments have now been completed:

  • Arbitrum
  • Worldchain
  • Ink
  • Polygon PoS
  • Fraxtal
  • Scroll
  • Optimism

Verified contract addresses will be added to the Morpho docs soon. The second batch of deployments is anticipated for mid-February.

3 Likes