Upbit to list Morpho and Euler tokens in KRW market, signaling DeFi lending’s growing appeal in Asia

South Korea’s dominant crypto exchange is rolling out the welcome mat for DeFi lending. Upbit will list Morpho (MORPHO) in its KRW trading market on July 25 at 18:00 KST, with Euler (EUL) following one day later on July 26.

The announcement alone was enough to nudge Morpho’s price up 4.8%.

Why these two protocols, and why now

Morpho and Euler both belong to a newer generation of lending protocols that take a modular approach, essentially letting users and developers customize lending markets rather than relying on one-size-fits-all pools. This contrasts with legacy monolithic platforms like Aave and Compound, where governance committees set parameters for the entire protocol. Modular lending flips that model, giving market creators more granular control over collateral types, interest rate curves, and risk parameters.

Morpho has been on a tear lately. The protocol raised $175 million in June, pushing its valuation north of $2 billion. Its active deposits now surpass $11 billion, with roughly $4 billion in outstanding loans.

Just days before the Upbit listing, on July 22, Morpho launched a fixed-rate lending feature called Morpho Midnight on the Base mainnet. Fixed-rate lending has long been a white whale in DeFi, something traditional finance takes for granted but decentralized protocols have struggled to implement cleanly.

Euler suffered a major exploit back in 2023, but rebuilt, and its modular lending infrastructure has since expanded to new chains. On July 17, the protocol deployed on HSK Chain, broadening its capacity to offer loans against tokenized assets. Its token, EUL, was trading in the $1 to $1.70 range around the time of the listing announcement.

Morpho’s market cap sat in the $1 billion to $1.3 billion range prior to the listing, placing it roughly between the 50th and 60th largest crypto assets by market capitalization.

The Upbit effect

When a token gets a KRW trading pair on Upbit, it gains direct fiat on-ramp access to millions of Korean traders who might otherwise never interact with it. Historically, this has produced sharp, short-term price spikes as new capital floods in. The 4.8% Morpho bump on announcement alone is textbook.

The back-to-back scheduling is notable. Listing both on consecutive days suggests Upbit sees enough demand to justify two DeFi lending tokens in rapid succession, rather than spacing them out to avoid cannibalizing attention.

What this means for investors

Morpho’s $11 billion in deposits demonstrates real demand for more customizable credit infrastructure. First, expect increased liquidity for both MORPHO and EUL. KRW pairs tend to generate meaningful volume, particularly in the first few weeks after listing.

Second, Morpho’s fixed-rate lending launch adds a fundamental catalyst that sits underneath the listing hype. If Morpho Midnight gains traction on Base, it could attract institutional borrowers who have historically avoided DeFi’s variable-rate structures.

Euler presents a different risk-reward profile. The protocol’s recovery from the 2023 exploit is notable, and its expansion to HSK Chain shows technical ambition. EUL’s price range of $1 to $1.70 suggests the market hasn’t fully re-rated the token.

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