Cryptoeconomics

News, data and analysis on tokenized assets, market design and digital economic systems.

Protocol

Maple Finance

An underwritten private-credit business onchain: Maple's own team selects the borrowers (trading firms, market makers and corporate treasuries) and lenders carry the credit exposure directly.

Category Private credit
Home network Ethereum
Governance Company, tokenholder vote
Token SYRUP

The economic model

Maple earns management and performance fees on the pools it runs. Borrowers are trading firms, market makers and corporate treasuries; almost all of the book is now overcollateralised against bitcoin, ether and other liquid crypto assets rather than lent unsecured, and the firm's secured lending pool reported a 159.1% collateral ratio on $847m of assets on 25 July 2026. Lenders take the credit exposure directly: a default reduces the net asset value of the pool that made the loan, and neither the treasury nor SYRUP holders stand behind it. That is the difference between Maple and a pooled money market: there is a named underwriter, but no mutualised backstop.

The retail-facing wrapper, syrupUSDC, packages the same lending into a transferable yield-bearing token quoted at 4.9% on 25 July 2026, which is then used as collateral in other protocols. This is where the risk becomes less legible. A holder of syrupUSDC in a Morpho or Euler vault is exposed to Maple's underwriting through two layers of contract, and the collateral behind the loans is the same crypto that would fall in the stress scenario that caused a default. DefiLlama put Maple's TVL at $2.654bn and active loans at $2.016bn on 25 July 2026; Maple's own site reported $4.29bn of assets under management on the same day, a wider figure that includes mandates not captured as onchain TVL.

SYRUP is a governance token with a buyback claim and no dividend. MIP-019, approved between 27 and 31 October 2025 with more than 99% of participating voting power, ended the stSYRUP staking emissions that had been the token's main source of return (onchain streams stopped in November 2025) and replaced them with the Syrup Strategic Fund, to which 25% of protocol revenue is directed and from which buybacks are made. The switch is honest about what it is: emissions paid holders in newly issued supply, the fund pays them by retiring it. With annualised protocol revenue of $12.95m on 25 July 2026, a quarter of revenue is a modest sum against a $182m market capitalisation.

How it is governed

Credit decisions are made by Maple's own underwriting team, not by tokenholders. SYRUP holders vote on Maple Improvement Proposals covering token economics and treasury policy; pool terms, borrower selection and collateral requirements sit with the company.

Where it runs

Ethereum, with syrupUSDC also issued on Solana and available in lending markets on Arbitrum

The numbers

Each figure as published by the source named on the row. Protocol metrics are especially prone to double-counting; where a provider states a caveat, it is carried here.

MetricValue As ofSource
Assets under management $4.29bn 25 July 2026 Maple Finance
Active loans outstanding $2.02bn 25 July 2026 DefiLlama: Maple Finance
Annualised protocol revenue $12.9m 25 July 2026 DefiLlama: Maple Finance
Secured lending pool collateral ratio 159.10% 25 July 2026 Maple Finance
syrupUSDC yield 4.90% 25 July 2026 Maple Finance

Reading protocol metrics

Value locked, fees and volume are computed differently by every provider, and the same activity often appears in two of them. We publish the provider's own figure with its method attached rather than reconciling the difference into a number nobody published.

Data and methods →

Sources

  1. Maple Finance maple.finance · 25 Jul 2026
  2. Maple Finance: SYRUP token maple.finance · 25 Jul 2026
  3. DefiLlama: Maple Finance defillama.com · 25 Jul 2026
  4. The Defiant: Maple's SYRUP stakers vote to end staking rewards, launch DAO treasury thedefiant.io · 25 Jul 2026
  5. Maple Finance: syrupUSDC expands to Arbitrum maple.finance · 25 Jul 2026

Elsewhere

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