Maple Finance is quietly becoming one of the most important bridges between decentralized funding (DEFI) and traditional funding.
The co-foundation of Sidney Powell In 2021, the institutional crypto loan platform has relieved over $ 5 billion in loans and increasingly places itself as the infrastructure layer for tokenized private credit-a sector Tradfi quickly embraces.
After a turbulent couple of years for crypto credit markets, Maple has staged an impressive comeback. By 2024, its total value rose over 580%, powered by new products such as SyrupusDC – a permitted yield offering blocked for US users but aimed at global defi protocols. Its tvl that year went from about $ 44 million to over $ 300 million. Sidney Powell is a speaker on the Consensus 2025 Open Money Summit on May 14.
Powell points to Maple’s depot integrations, native BTC support and low counterparty risk as important benefits for institutions seeking dividends in a post-TX landscape.
At the same time, Maple has adjusted his governance and incentives around a single token, syrup that migrates away from the older NPL model. Without stock owners behind the scenes, Powell claims that syrup is the only capital structure needed – a design that equates the incorrectly adjusted incentives that have plagued other token projects.
Prior to the Consensus 2025, Maple expands his footprint in Asia and Latin America, a Bitcoin Liquid Staking token launches and is investing heavily in the continued increase in institutional defi.
Powell, an Australian fintech entrepreneur who started his career in traditional finance at National Australia Bank in Melbourne, sat down with Coindesk to talk about what’s next. This question and answer was edited for clarity and briefness.
Coindesk: Maple’s growth in 2024 has been impressive. What drives it and how do you place maple differently than other defi loans?
Powell: Much of the growth in the 2nd quarter came from our ability to accept a wider range of security – for example, sun, not just BTC. It opened us to more tailor -made types of loans to our institutional borrowers who accepted sun as security instead of only BTC and ETH.
It gave us a wider set of customers. But from 3rd quarter and in the future, the real driver was the launch of SyrupusDC – a permission -free version of the product aimed at defi, though blocked in the US, it offers the same dividend from institutional loans under the hood. We also formed partnerships with commute, morpho and cloud.
Having that defi -access point was the ability of the protocols to integrate a really good source of growth. The other thing is: Borrowers like our product. They can send native BTC without smart contracts and face less counterparty risk.
Because we only really deal with institutions, we have consistently offered a higher dividend that attracts more capital over time.
The introduction of the syruptokenet was absolutely central to the development of maple. What is the token’s role in the ecosystem and how does it improve?
Syrup ties governance together – it’s the only token in the maple ecosystem. Last year we migrated from the old NPL token to Syrup, which now handles coordination and governance. What is unique is that we have no equity; There is only the token and I think it prevents an inherent conflict of interest.
It removes the conflicts of interest you see when the shareholders extract all the value and the token is treated as a reflection. With us it is only token. About 90% of it is already circulating and it has been around for over four years.
All interests are in line; It is only the token and there is no equity to connect the ecosystem. This long -term adjustment of interests helps keep the ecosystem connected.
Earlier this year – and recently – volatility has been extreme. In early February, Maple published a post stating that it managed to endure one of the biggest liquidation events with zero liquidation on its protocol. What lessons did you get from this experience and how did you achieve this?
First, these events always Seems to happen on Sunday night! February was no different when was not August and April last year. But what saved us is insurance – all our clients after collateral and have done it over all the periods of volatility we have had. Over the past 18 months, we have only had a partial liquidation showing the importance of insurance customers to ensure that they can always send more security.
It emphasizes how careful we are with loan-to-value conditions and the kind of security we accept. If we accept something very illuminated, there is more risk for us, our lenders and capital providers in times of volatility.
After each volatility event, we make a post-Mortem to refine our process. It has become even more important as we have grown from $ 150 million to $ 800 million in the total value locked – we need to be much more named and effective.
Maple is expanded to Asia and the Pacific area and Latin America. What opportunities and challenges do you predict in these markets?In Asia, everything runs on relationships, so we hired a BD person in Hong Kong to help build it. We have dividends from lending against Bitcoin and we have a Bitcoin yield product that I think will be very important in cracking Asia.
There is such a large base of individuals and family offices with high net value that hold BTC so that our Bitcoin yield and lending products fit well.
In Latin America it is more of a retail -driven market. Syrupusdc penetration means more there – apps like lemon bring customer deposits and use defi on backend. Our retail -facing products and partnerships will be the key to cracking that region. There is also a large penetration of Bitcoin there, so BTC yield products will also be really good.
When we look forward to consensus, which key themes and development do you see in the defi world in the near future, and how is maple positioning of themselves to deal with them?
I think reward assets will continue to be a sustained theme because it is very appealing to institutions, especially those who come into crypto for the first time. We see more tradfi players like Cantor Fitzgerald getting involved in crypto-supported lending.
StableCeCoins and lending are proven models that institutions understand and have proven. They will continue to draw attention to institutions that may be professional asset leaders and their first steps into space will be an important thing. Bitcoin is often their entrance point – first they buy it, then they will borrow against it or generate dividends.
That’s why we’re focused on Bitcoin Defi and launching a Bitcoin Liquid Stake Token. It lets people use BTC as security that actually serves the yield – something that is missing so far.
