Originally published at mrnasdog.com/research/morpho/inflation

➜ Start with the Morpho coin page for the short answer (should you buy MORPHO?) and its price drivers: mrnasdog.com/research/morpho

MORPHO Inflation Analysis · October 2026 · Supply growing · projected to keep growing

MORPHO supply is growing fast, even though no new MORPHO is ever minted. In the last 90 days 49.28M MORPHO reached the market: 34.79M from the monthly founder and partner unlocks and 14.49M paid out by the Morpho Association from its DAO grant. Nothing was bought back, burned or locked, so circulating supply grew +7.03%, and the same schedule points to about +7.03% again in the next 90 days. The cap is fixed at 1B MORPHO, and about 70% of it already circulates.

The verdict, in one paragraph

The MrNasDog Pressure Framework reads Morpho (MORPHO) at +7.03% net over the last 90 days (Jul 16 to Oct 14 2026) and +7.03% for the next 90. Our supply monitor, which reads the market’s circulating figure every day, shows +7.17% over its own 90 days. The gap is 0.14 percentage points, inside our 0.5-point line, so no warning chip is shown: the two readings agree. In one line, MORPHO is inflationary by unlock — a fixed-supply token whose float grows every month as locked coins are released, with no buyer built into the protocol.

Sell pressure: where new MORPHO comes from

Protocol inflation is 0. All 1B MORPHO were created when the token launched, and the total supply of both the live token and the older legacy token read exactly the same at both ends of the window. The DAO’s safe still owns the token contract, and a test call shows it could create more coins after a governance vote, so we watch it every rebuild. No vote to do that exists, and nothing was created.

Vesting unlocks are the biggest source: 34.79M MORPHO in 90 days. The founders (15.2% of supply) and the third group of strategic partners (6.7%) agreed to longer lockups when MORPHO became transferable in November 2024, and their coins now open on the 21st of every month at about 11.60M MORPHO each time. Three releases fell inside the window (Jul 21, Aug 21 and Sep 21 2026), and three more fall inside the next 90 days. About 208M MORPHO is still locked under this schedule, with the last release on Apr 21 2028.

Foundation and unscheduled unlocks add 14.49M MORPHO. On Apr 30 2026 the Morpho DAO sent a 150M MORPHO grant (vote MIP 131) to a safe held by the Morpho Association, the non-profit that funds work on the network through 2030. That safe held 105.85M on Jul 16 2026 and 91.36M on Oct 14 2026. It pays out almost every week, in small amounts to contributors and in larger blocks such as the 9.52M it sent to two wallets on Sep 16 2026. Because the Association pays every month, the next 90 days carry the same 14.49M.

Long-term locked or bankruptcy supply is 0. No bankruptcy estate or trustee holds MORPHO, and no lock outside the monthly schedule is due to open.

Buy pressure: where new MORPHO goes

The programmatic buyback is 0. Borrowers on Morpho pay interest to lenders, and none of it is used to buy MORPHO. The protocol has a fee switch that could send a share of interest to the DAO, but it has never been turned on, and no vote to turn it on has been proposed.

The protocol fee burn is 0. The dead address held the same 7.18 MORPHO at both ends of the window and total supply did not fall, so nothing was destroyed.

Foundation buying is 0. Neither the DAO nor the Association bought MORPHO in these 90 days. Apollo signed a deal in February 2026 that lets it buy up to 90M MORPHO over four years, but that buying takes coins that are already on the market, so it is demand, not a cut in supply.

New long-term locks are 0. MORPHO has no staking and no vote lock, so holders cannot take coins off the market in return for rewards.

Foundation and overhang

Two pools outside the circulating float can still reach the market. The first is the locked schedule itself, about 208M MORPHO owed to founders and partners, which opens at about 11.60M a month. The second is the Morpho Association’s safe with 91.36M MORPHO, the rest of its 150M grant, which it spends on its own plan with no published monthly amount.

Several other team wallets are already counted as circulating, so their moves add nothing to supply, but we still read them at every rebuild. The Morpho DAO treasury holds 291.0M MORPHO on Ethereum and 13M on Base; it did not move in the window, and its last outflow was 6M MORPHO to its rewards wallet on Jun 22 2026. A contributor grant safe holds 41.66M, a Morpho Labs safe 11.41M, and the DAO rewards wallet about 4.2M across Ethereum and Base. If the Association’s balance falls between our checks, the outflow enters Foundation and unscheduled unlocks at the next check; if any of the other wallets starts moving coins in a way the market starts counting as new supply, it enters the same row.

How MORPHO compares to other DeFi lending tokens

Among lending protocol tokens, MORPHO sits at the supply-heavy end. It has a hard cap of 1B and no emission, which sounds like the strongest setup, but only about 70% of that cap circulates and the rest is released on a calendar. A fixed cap protects holders from new minting; it does not protect them from unlocks of coins that already exist.

Aave, the largest rival, works the other way around: its supply is mostly unlocked, and since mid-2026 it routes protocol revenue into buying AAVE back from the market. Morpho earns its users large amounts of interest, but none of it flows to MORPHO while the fee switch stays off. So in a Morpho vs Aave comparison, AAVE has a buyer built in and MORPHO does not; MORPHO depends on outside buyers such as funds, the Apollo deal and governance voters to absorb about 49M coins every 90 days.

Older lending tokens that still pay users in their own coin out of a reserve look closer to MORPHO’s Association payouts, but MORPHO’s main source is a fixed unlock calendar rather than open-ended rewards. That makes MORPHO’s supply easy to predict: the unlocks follow a published calendar and end on Apr 21 2028, after which only the DAO and Association pools are left.

What to watch in the next 90 days

Oct 21 2026: the next monthly unlock of about 11.60M MORPHO for founders and partners.

Nov 21 2026 and Dec 21 2026: two more monthly unlocks of about 11.60M each; Nov 21 2026 is also two years after MORPHO became transferable.

The Morpho Association’s safe (91.36M MORPHO): a large block payout like the 9.52M on Sep 16 2026 would push the next reading above 14.49M.

Morpho governance: any vote to turn on the fee switch, start a buyback or mint new MORPHO would change this reading at once. The only supply vote in the window, MIP 134 on Sep 18 2026, set rewards of about $50,000 a month in MORPHO for users on the Arc network, paid on Ethereum.

Apollo’s buying under its 90M MORPHO deal: it adds demand, but any coins it receives straight from team wallets would come with transfer limits.

Summary

The MrNasDog Pressure Framework reads Morpho (MORPHO) at +7.03% net over the last 90 days and about the same for the next 90: 34.79M MORPHO of monthly founder and partner unlocks plus 14.49M of Morpho Association payouts, against no buyback, no burn and no lock. Nothing is minted and the cap stays at 1B MORPHO, but about 208M MORPHO is still due under the unlock calendar until Apr 21 2028, and the Association holds another 91.36M. The key risk is that this steady flow of unlocked coins meets no buyer built into the protocol; the main upside would be a governance vote that turns on the fee switch. Until then, MORPHO supply keeps growing by about 7% every 90 days.

MrNasDog Pressure Framework analysis of MORPHO, Metric 1 — Inflation. Data + explanation only. Not financial advice. Checked Oct 14 2026.

Original: https://mrnasdog.com/research/morpho/inflation · Data + explanation only. Not financial advice.