Morpho is the leading lending network that allows the creation of immutable and efficient lending markets permissionlessly. Curators create lending vaults where users can lend assets to earn interest.

As with most DeFi protocols, Morpho distributes rewards to encourage users to engage in specific behaviors, such as supplying assets, borrowing, or providing collateral. These rewards come in the form of MORPHO tokens.

Initially, Morpho developed its own system to distribute these rewards, but it soon became apparent that this approach was hard to scale internally. Maintaining an in-house incentive program was complex, resource-heavy, and pulled focus from Morpho’s core mission: delivering the best lending experience.

Morpho turned to Merkl for a smarter, scalable solution.

By moving its rewards program to Merkl, Morpho streamlined the entire rewards experience for its users.

Behind the scenes, Merkl tracks participation in Morpho Markets and automatically distributes MORPHO rewards according to user onchain activity.

Thanks to Merkl’s API integration, Morpho users can see their additional MORPHO rewards APY directly in the app, on top of the native APY. Claiming rewards is simple: users just click “Claim on Merkl” in the Earn section of the Morpho app. They are then taken to a dedicated Merkl dashboard, where they can easily collect their MORPHO rewards.

To make the experience even smoother, a custom-branded version of the Merkl app was created for Morpho. This white-label version features only Morpho reward campaigns and is fully branded with Morpho’s colors and design. Users can explore Morpho’s rewards directly within the Merkl app without feeling like they’ve left Morpho, ensuring a consistent and frictionless experience from start to finish.

Beyond technology and branding, Merkl also helped Morpho shape the way incentives are designed. Together, the teams introduced new campaign types tailored specifically to Morpho’s goals. For example, the Morpho single-token campaign—such as “Supply USDC to any Morpho market”—rewards users who deposit a given asset across the protocol, regardless of which market they choose. This highlights Merkl’s ability to adapt and design unique incentive mechanisms tailored to the specific needs of each protocol.

Finally, Merkl supports Morpho in bringing these rewards to a broader audience. When Morpho was integrated with  Coinbase DeFi Lend, the same Merkl infrastructure powering incentives in the Morpho app was seamlessly integrated into Coinbase’s user experience. This ensures that Morpho’s reward mechanisms remain consistent across platforms, while making them accessible to entirely new segments of users.

At the time of writing, Morpho has already launched over 500 reward campaigns powered by Merkl, seamlessly distributing MORPHO tokens to the community across six different chains: Arbitrum, Base, Ethereum, Katana, Tac, and Unichain.

So far, this represents $7.35M in rewards sent to hundreds of thousands of users, all without distracting Morpho’s team from what they do best: building the ultimate DeFi lending experience.