Maple Finance

At a glance


Founded	2019, by Sidney Powell and Joe Flanagan
Headquarters	Founded in Melbourne, Australia; the CEO has worked from Miami since 2021
Layer	Private credit and on-chain asset management
Key products	syrupUSDC and syrupUSDT (yield-bearing dollar tokens), institutional secured lending, SYRUP governance token
Scale (with date)	4.6 bn USD of assets under management at the end of June 2026, company figure
Competes with	Centrifuge, Figure, Sky's credit allocators, other on-chain credit desks

What it does

A depositor puts USDC or USDT into a Maple pool and receives syrupUSDC or syrupUSDT, a token that rises in value as borrowers pay interest. Maple lends the pooled dollars to vetted institutions, mostly trading firms and market makers, who pledge crypto such as bitcoin or ether as collateral. If the collateral falls too far, it can be sold to repay the loan.

Overcollateralization means a borrower pledges more value than it borrows. Maple has required it since May 2024, at 150% or more, so a borrower of 100 USD posts at least 150 USD of collateral. The depositor's risk is then mostly that the collateral cannot be sold fast enough in a crash, not that the borrower simply walks away.

The company reports growth on that model. Maple says it closed the first half of 2026 with 4.6 bn USD of assets under management, up 81% on the year, and 1.9 bn USD of loans outstanding, a record. It reported 4.4 mn USD of revenue for the second quarter.

How it is different

Maple is one of the few survivors of the unsecured on-chain lending experiment. When it launched in May 2021 it lent on reputation, with nothing pledged. In 2022 that model produced about 54 mn USD of bad debt, including 36 mn USD from Orthogonal Trading across eight loans after the firm hid its exposure to FTX. Goldfinch, which kept the unsecured model, voted to wind down in June 2026. Maple changed the model instead.

Its tokens also work as DeFi building blocks. syrupUSDC is held and posted as collateral in other protocols, so Maple's loan book reaches users who never deal with Maple directly. Its business model also differs from a fund manager's: it earns a share of interest, and DefiLlama put its take rate at about 13% in September 2026, much higher than the few basis points a tokenized Treasury fund keeps.

Where it fits

A short history of tokenization tells the story of the 2022 losses and the move to collateral. RWAs in DeFi follows syrupUSDC as collateral. Where RWA stands in September 2026 places Maple in the private-credit category. What works, what doesn't uses Maple and Goldfinch as the clearest test of unsecured credit. Related profiles: Centrifuge, Figure and Aave.

Risks and open questions

Collateral is crypto, not real-world assets. Maple is counted in RWA private credit because its loans are to real institutions under legal agreements, but the pledged assets are volatile tokens. A sharp crash that outpaces liquidations is the main risk to depositors.

Borrowers are concentrated in trading firms. Their health depends on the same crypto market cycle as the collateral, so defaults and falling collateral values can arrive together.

Reported figures come from the company and aggregators. Maple's statement that it has had no credit losses since May 2024 comes from company and partner research, not an audit.

The margin is thin. Maple's own net interest margin is well under one percent in aggregator estimates, so growth in volume matters more than price.

What to watch next

A crypto drawdown: the first sharp fall since the move to collateral will test whether liquidations keep depositors whole.
syrupUSDC as collateral: wider use in lending markets spreads Maple's credit risk to users of other protocols.
Regulated-dollar products: Maple launched syrupUSDG in the first half of 2026 for users who need a regulated stablecoin, and uptake shows whether institutions follow.
Loans against real-world assets: any shift of collateral beyond crypto would make Maple an RWA lender in the full sense.