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.
SYRUP price
$0.1581
+1.4% 24h
Latest data · 15 min delay
Risks identified
- Counterparty
Maple's core model is credit to a curated set of crypto-native institutions. Even with overcollateralization, borrower default is the central risk: in December 2022 Orthogonal Trading defaulted on ~$36M after misrepresenting its FTX exposure, causing an ~80% loss to lenders in the affected M11 USDC pool. Loan performance depends on the quality of Maple Direct's underwriting and borrower disclosure.
- Collateral
Overcollateralized loans are backed by volatile crypto (BTC, ETH, SOL) at roughly 105-130% collateral ratios held in custody contracts. A sharp price drop can erode the collateral buffer, and liquidating large positions in stressed markets may not fully cover the loan, especially given short 30-180 day tenors.
- Smart Contract
Lender funds sit in Maple's pool, loan and withdrawal-manager contracts. Pre-mainnet audits found high-severity bugs (e.g. Three Sigma's V2 findings allowing bogus fee managers, arbitrary origination fees, or a malicious withdrawal-manager to drain pools), which were fixed; residual contract risk remains inherent to the protocol.
- Regulatory
Maple operates a KYC-gated institutional credit business and, via Maple Direct, issues real secured loans to legal entities. This exposes lenders and the protocol to securities, lending-license and cross-border regulatory risk, particularly as it expands into APAC/LATAM and tokenized Treasury-style products.
- Reserve / Depeg
syrupUSDC yield ultimately depends on USDC/USDT lent to borrowers. A depeg or freeze of the underlying stablecoin, or of syrupUSDC relative to its net asset value during a rush of withdrawals, could impair redemptions since loans are locked for fixed tenors and cannot be recalled instantly.