- Maple Finance’s AUM is bigger than BlackRock’s BUIDL.
- The protocol has expanded to Arbitrum and Plasma.
- CEO eyes $5 billion AUM this year.
At $3.8 billion in investor deposits, Maple Finance isn’t the largest decentralised finance lending protocol in the world, but that hasn’t stopped it from becoming a champion in onchain asset management.
Maple’s assets under management stand at close to $4 billion, almost double that of BUIDL, BlackRock’s institutional digital liquidity fund, making it the world’s largest onchain asset manager.
Sid Powell, CEO and cofounder of Maple, says the growth indicates investor preference for stable yield.
“The majority of Maple’s growth is being driven by institutional credit demand,” Powell told DL News.
Large investors are piling into the protocol’s curated lending pools, which offer transparent and predictable yields, the Maple CEO said.
“It’s a shift away from opportunistic strategies toward a more stable, credit-driven yield base,” Powell said.
Maple’s ascent is part of a wider trend in which DeFi money markets are exploding amid a massive influx of capital. Deposits into DeFi lending protocols are at an all-time high of almost $135 billion as investors chase onchain yield.
Yield-bearing stablecoin
Maple’s yield-bearing stablecoin syrupUSD has driven the protocol’s growth.
SyrupUSD plugs into major lending and yield protocols like Spark, Morpho, Kamino, and Pendle.
Investors can deposit stablecoins like USDT or USDC into Maple to mint syrupUSD. They can direct the deposits into curated lending pools, tokenised treasuries, or Bitcoin yield products on Maple to earn yield, which flows into their syrupUSD.
They can also deposit syrupUSD into DeFi protocols like Spark or Kamino, or looped into leveraged strategies on Pendle and Morpho to turbocharge their yields.
Plasma-fuelled deposits
On Monday, Maple deployed syrupUSD on Plasma, the Tether-backed blockchain, and deposits reached $200 million in the first 24 hours, filling the vault’s capacity in the process.
The adoption of syrupUSD by yield-chasing investors has catapulted the stablecoin to surpass $1 billion in market value.
That supply growth has also been aided by Arbitrum’s DRIP, a $40 million reward scheme for DeFi users on the blockchain. Maple deployed syrupUSD on Arbitrum at the start of September, in time to benefit from the blockchain turning on its token rewards faucet.
Maple isn’t done yet and has its sights set on reaching $5 billion in assets under management by the end of the year, according to Powell.
Real demand
But such breakneck expansion raises questions of sustainability, especially whether credit demand and incentives can keep pace with rising investor deposits without compressing yield.
Also, Maple’s momentum relies heavily on syrupUSD, which raises concerns of overreliance on a single growth engine. What happens if investor appetite cools?
Powell says he isn’t worried because Maple’s yield is “grounded in genuine economic activity.”
“The sustainability comes from the fact that Maple’s yield is generated by real credit demand, not by circular activity or opaque leverage,” Powell told DL News.
“Loans on Maple are underwritten to borrowers with operating businesses, like prime brokers, [Bitcoin] miners, and trading firms, who rely on this capital to function.”
For Powell, Maple’s next act is gaining access to larger credit facilities by integrating the protocol with traditional finance infrastructure.
“We’re moving from experimental protocols towards durable financial rails that can support billions in capital,” Powell said.
Osato Avan-Nomayo is our Nigeria-based DeFi correspondent. He covers DeFi and tech. Got a tip? Please contact him at osato@dlnews.com.
