Maple Finance
Credit · SYRUP
Maple Finance runs onchain lending pools to vetted borrowers — institutions, funds and businesses — closer to a blockchain-based credit marketplace than open overcollateralized DeFi lending.
Onchain institutional / private credit.
Protocol TVL
$2.26B
+14.3% 24h
Latest data · 15 min delay
Research
Components, facts, FAQ, timeline, and tokenomics in one place
Main components (4)
Maple Institutional Lending Pools
Permissioned, KYC-gated lending pools where institutional capital allocators lend USDC/USDT to vetted crypto-native borrowers (prop trading firms, market makers, miners, yield funds). Since 2023 all loans are overcollateralized (typically 105-130%) with BTC, ETH or SOL held in Maple's custody contracts, running 30-180 day fixed-rate tenors. Underwriting is handled in-house by Maple Direct.
syrupUSDC / syrupUSDT (Syrup module)
Permissionless, yield-bearing tokenized lending vaults launched alongside SYRUP in Nov 2024 that let non-institutional users deposit stablecoins. Deposits are routed into Maple's underlying institutional credit pools; the syrupUSDC token accrues value as borrowers repay interest, abstracting the KYC-gated pools behind a single composable ERC-20.
Maple Direct
Maple's in-house credit and underwriting arm, launched June 2023. It sources and vets institutional borrowers and issues overcollateralized USDC/USDT loans backed by BTC, ETH and staked ETH held with a qualified custodian, bypassing banks. It is the credit engine behind the secured institutional lending book.
SYRUP token & staking (stSYRUP)
The protocol's governance and value-accrual token, which replaced the legacy MPL token in Nov 2024 at a fixed 1 MPL : 100 SYRUP rate. Holders can stake to stSYRUP for rewards and govern the protocol. A portion of protocol revenue funds strategic SYRUP buybacks.
Differentiator
Institutional / private-credit model: borrower quality, repayment history, collateral ratios, defaults, pool managers and loan terms matter most.
Organizational structure
Units & roles
- Core development and asset-management company
Maple (Maple Labs / Maple Finance)
The company behind the Maple protocol, founded in 2019 by Sidney Powell and Joe Flanagan. It builds the smart contracts, operates Maple Direct underwriting, and manages the Syrup products. Team members have backgrounds at J.P. Morgan, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, BlackRock, Galaxy Digital and PIMCO.
- Co-Founder & CEO
Sidney Powell
Co-founded Maple in 2019 and leads the company as CEO; ex-institutional banking background.
- Co-Founder & Executive Chairman
Joe Flanagan
Co-founded Maple in 2019; serves as Executive Chairman. Other named executives include CTO Matt Collum and COO Ryan O'Shea.
Investment rounds
| Date | Round | Amount | Investors | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-08-22 | Strategic | $5M | BlockTower CapitalTioga CapitalRoom40 VenturesCherry CryptoSpartan CapitalGSR VenturesVeris VenturesMaven 11Framework Ventures | Source |
Similarity to traditional finance products
How Maple Finance maps onto established TradFi structures, and where it diverges.
| TradFi product | Similarity to Maple Finance | Key differences |
|---|---|---|
| Private credit / direct-lending fund | Like a private credit fund, Maple pools lender capital and extends short-duration, negotiated loans to a curated set of institutional borrowers, earning a spread on interest. Underwriting is done by an in-house credit arm (Maple Direct), analogous to a fund's credit committee. | Loans, collateral and repayments are on-chain and transparent in real time; lender positions are tokenized (syrupUSDC) and composable; settlement is near-instant versus a private fund's lockups and quarterly reporting. |
| Prime brokerage secured lending desk | Maple Direct extends collateralized stablecoin credit to trading firms and market makers to fund inventory and basis trades, much as a prime broker lends against posted collateral. | Collateral (BTC/ETH/SOL) sits in on-chain custody contracts with programmatic terms rather than in a broker's balance sheet, and access is via a permissioned DeFi protocol rather than a bilateral prime relationship. |