What Utilisation Tells You as a Lender

Utilisation is the single most actionable real-time signal in a lending pool. It tells you how much capital is actively borrowed and — critically — how much remains available for withdrawal. A pool at 95% utilisation has only 5% of total deposits that can be withdrawn immediately. Everything else is locked in active loans.

The market average right now is 57.6% across 53 tracked pools. 1 pools are operating at critical capacity (≥90%) — meaning those pools carry real withdrawal risk for large positions. Always size your deposit against the free float, not the total TVL.

The Interest Rate Model — How It Uses Utilisation

Every major lending protocol implements a kink-based interest rate model. From 0% up to the optimal point (typically 80%), borrow rates climb gradually. Cross the kink and rates jump sharply — often doubling or tripling within a few percentage points. This is deliberate architecture: the spike punishes excess borrowing, incentivises repayments, and pulls utilisation back toward the target band.

As a lender, you benefit from elevated yields during high-utilisation periods. But above 90%, you're also exposed to the liquidity crunch — your capital may be temporarily illiquid if it exceeds the pool's free float.

How to Use This Dashboard Effectively

Chasing yield? Sort by Supply APY, then verify utilisation is below 90%. The optimal zone (45–80%) consistently offers the best risk-adjusted yield — high enough demand to push rates up, but enough free float to exit cleanly.

Monitoring risk? Filter by "Critical ≥90%" to immediately see which pools are near capacity. These pools pay the highest rates but carry the highest withdrawal risk — suitable only for positions smaller than the free float (TVL × (100% − utilisation %)).

Researching a protocol? Check the Protocol Average chart above. A protocol with consistently high average utilisation across all its pools signals strong borrowing demand platform-wide — generally a healthy sign, unless multiple individual pools are simultaneously in the critical zone. Note that Morpho is excluded from this dashboard — see below for why.

Why Morpho Is Excluded from This Dashboard

Morpho and Morpho Blue are deliberately not shown here. Unlike Aave, Compound, or Spark — which operate shared liquidity pools — Morpho uses a peer-to-peer matching engine that directly pairs individual lenders with individual borrowers. This architectural difference means utilisation near or at 100% is structurally expected and by design on Morpho, not a risk signal.

Displaying Morpho pools alongside conventional lending protocols would be actively misleading: a 98% utilisation figure that indicates a serious liquidity squeeze on Aave simply means "fully matched" on Morpho, with no withdrawal queue or rate spike implied. To keep this dashboard accurate and actionable, Morpho pools are excluded entirely. You can explore Morpho yields on the Yield Finder.