From $9M to $3.6B: How Maple Scaled On-Chain Lending

Every week that was a big hug. Uh, you know, we sort of decided [music] to pull over DeFi lending positions. So, we have no exposure right now on that side. I think stablecoin adoption is now the first segment where it's non-cyclical, right? Institutions.

>> [music] >> And that's where the real fun happens, right? They uh they will send you, you know, due diligence questionnaires of 100 pages. We were at like 9 million in TVL, [music] right? And they were 9 million in TVL. Like you're not going to close a partnership of 100 million.

All the world's dollars are going to become stablecoins. >> [music] >> And many of those stablecoins are going to be looking for yield, right? >> Okay. Hello everybody. Let's kick it off.

Welcome to another episode of Beyond Yield. This one is featuring Maple Finance. Maple Finance is a leading on-chain asset management protocol. Um, and through institutional grade lending and yield strategies, Maple Finance brings the rigor of traditional finance to the transparency and innovation of crypto and web 3. And joined with me here is Maarten.

Uh Maarten, GM. Welcome to Beyond Yield. Thank you for having Thank you for joining. Um, how's it going so far for you today? >> Yeah, going great.

Thanks, Dylan. Great to be here. Uh excited to kick it off. And this curtain behind you, that's a window or I think it's a window. >> Unfortunately a painting.

Um, the window The window here in New York would come with an absolute premium if that was the view, so uh just a painting for now. Um, but yeah, let's kick it off. We always like to start with background on just who we're chatting with. Get to know you, Maarten. Could you tell us a little about your journey?

Um, so your journey maybe in web 3 before joining Maple in 2022. And then a bit about your role today. What's your current focus and where you sit today on the Maple Finance team? >> Yeah. Yeah, so um yeah, great journey so far.

You know, my grandmother told me about Bitcoin in 2015. So, that was pretty epic. She read it in the newspaper and you know, she knew I was like really into investing and things like that. So, started diving into it in 2017, you know, experienced a massive run-up. Was living in New York at the time and you know, just going to all these like side events and me, you know, getting all these ICOs pitched and that was just a really epic moment in time.

But, you know, everybody sort of saw the potential. I was yet way too early. Um but, it was really good to experience at a young age. And from there, you know, always kept believing in the space, investing. And in 2021, I started the Twitter account.

You know, sort of like posting research and things like that on DeFi. And I got in touch with the Maple team with Sid, the CEO. And then they had a job opening that I applied for and you know, got the job and sort of started in May of 2022, my official career in crypto. So, you know, it was really epic. It was of course sort of, you know, a little bit post the height of the bull market.

There was still a lot of like froth in the space. And then I joined, you know, two weeks before um some of the like collapses in DeFi. So, yeah, that was you know, directly was thrown in front of the lions. >> Nice. You're you're a couple years before me.

I'm more of the 2017 class. Um and so, I let's take this into kind of like the background on Maple itself. You know, really for those who might not be entirely familiar with Maple, what is Maple Finance? And then from you joining the team in 2022, you know, what was it about the positioning of Maple Finance that really compelled you to contribute, you know, put your passion behind this project? >> Yes.

Yeah, so a lot of crypto was very sort of like ideological and very like purist, right? And it was very good for like innovation and sort of like people that were like very niche. Uh but when I saw Maple, I saw a company that really had the potential to actually really scale in the institutional domain. Uh and get real product market fit and growth. Um So, it was actually one of my the project I was most excited about at the time.

And sort of like that vision of just using the blockchain to um you know, make capital markets more global, more efficient, you know, create new opportunities. Uh and having that both that institutional lens as well as using all the benefits of the blockchain, but really taking the best of both worlds, right? Not just sort of like ignoring everything that history has taught us already and trying everything from scratch. I thought that vision was really good. And was very aligned with um what I believed in.

And then I also just really like the brand, you know, Maple, like the pancake stack, like Sid and Joe are great founders. So, I was really inspired by the story of, you know, how it got the origin, right? And those are also important things. It was sort of like an inspiring journey to uh to embark on. >> Yeah, it's funny you say that.

The Maple name itself, it it suggests, you know, that era of DeFi, like um when we have like PancakeSwap, right? And when we're going deeper into kind of that whole like segment of of um of terms and wording for different uh companies and projects in the space. Um and so today, Maple has three main core product offerings, right? There's the uh Syrup USDC and Syrup USDT, more for the um retail investors. Um and then there's Maple Secured uh or rather, yeah, Maple Institutional Secured Lending.

Um can you take us through the different product suite that's present today? Um yeah, a bit of background on these and how they may be um, catered to different investor needs. >> Yeah. Yeah, so Maple's core strategy is over-collateralized lending to institutional borrowers. So we just lend USDC, USDT uh, to institutional borrowers.

We take Bitcoin, Ethereum as collateral. And both of, you know, all these products are basically backed by the same the same strategy. Uh, it's just that sort of the wrapper, the way we make it available slightly different. SER USDC, SER USDT are really DeFi vaults. Uh, they're interoperable, right?

They're integrated in Aave, Morpho, Pendle, you know, they're cross-chain on Solana, Plasma. Um, and they're sort of really propagated all throughout DeFi. With all the benefits that brings, right? Instant liquidity, you know, you can use them as collateral, you can, you know, do all these cool things with it. Um, they're integrated in different wallets, exchanges, earn programs, uh, to power yield for users.

And then, the institutional lending product is really more for institutional allocators, right? There is KYC, there's onboarding, there's legal documentation. It's available in the US, right? For for allocators. You need to be an accredited investor.

Um, so it's just a different wrapper of the same underlying strategy. >> Mhm. One of the things I can that I think Maple's done extremely well, as you just referenced, is its positioning, right? For, let's say, the stable coins, so SER USDT, SER USDC, the positioning um, and the integrations with OKX and Binance to allow, like, just your your retail or your savvy retail investor to get exposure directly through these platforms, um, is a great growth vertical. As you mentioned, Aave as well, um, and other integrations.

And then, I'm curious also how this compares to the institutional side, right? On the on the retail side, you have this almost like these multipliers of positioning. Now, you're positioned well on these huge platforms with a ton of users. How do you position Maple in the institutional lens? You know, how is this getting in front of institutional institutions from this you know, multiplier perspective?

Or is it more of a one-off kind of relationship as you guys are working in onboarding institutions? >> Yes, that great question. So, that we sort of have a partner first strategy. So, we always like to partner with players that have all the client relationships that can offer our products to their users. So, to your point on the retail side, right?

That's the big exchanges, the names you mentioned, and others. The wallets and you know, there's the fintechs, the neo banks, right? And all of these are coming. On the institutional side, there's also sort of players you can partner with, right? Like whether that is the large credit funds that already own the relationships with all the LPs, right?

And they just want to add this as a strategy. Or sort of the investment banks, wealth managers, financial advisors, right? There's there's different ways you can uh you can partner with these institutions. What I would say right now is if you think about where we are in the market and the different like S-curves of adoption, then stablecoins are clearly like pretty advanced down the S-curve, right? Like growth is is, you know, triple digit growth year over year in uh in payments and you know, uh many different use cases.

Um I think yield is lagging that S-curve by, you know, 6 to 12 months. Uh once you have integrated stablecoins in payments, the very natural next step is then to offer yield to your clients, right? So, it's sort of like, you know, a few quarters behind uh in the retail segment. And we're now starting to see payments really take off in B2B as well, right? Um so, I think that yield on the B2B side is also going to uh to start taking off pretty soon, right?

Like we haven't seen all too much of it yet, but I think a lot of it is also going to happen in the next few months and quarters. And that's kind of how we think about it. So, we think about sort of three buckets. You've got DeFi, um which, you know, we're of course a very dominant player, right? The largest on-chain asset manager.

We partner with, you know, pretty much everybody in the crypto space. And then you sort of have the enterprise vertical, which is more like the fintech neo bank vertical. And that's now where a lot of the adoption is happening, right? It's very early stages still, but you know, you see that inflection point is happening right now. And then you got sort of the institutional vertical, which is more of the traditional asset managers, the banks, you know, family offices, things like that.

Um that will take a bit more time. So, they're traditionally lagging the fintechs, right? Uh because the fintechs are sort of disrupting them. Uh so, I think that is a little bit sort of our mental model for how all this is going to play out. >> And where you sit today on on your side of the on your desk essentially, which of these different um I guess demographics or categories is the is growing the fastest right now?

Where do you see the the largest increase of demand for Maple's products? >> Yeah, uh so, the largest increase of demand is the platforms that have a lot of retail users that already have stablecoins integrated and that sort of want to enable these uh these yield offerings, right? And that's sort of what you see with any technology trend is that retail is typically faster in adopting it than enterprise. Right, enterprise always lags a little bit. Uh depending on which technology it is, it can be much slower or uh or or relatively fast.

It's sort of the same with ChatGPT, right? Like everybody personally was already using it for a long time. And then companies are only really starting to implement it right now, right? Like we saw the inflection of like uh tropic ARR early this year. So, then that's very similar with crypto adoption.

Um like retail comes first and then, you know, you have the business segment. And it's really important as you scale a company is that you win, you know, sort of like each phase. Um because if you focus too early on a phase that is much further down, then, you know, you sort of miss out a lot of growth in the short term and the growth and the momentum that you create allows you to, you know, keep closing these deals. It's like a snowball, right? You need to keep the snowball rolling.

So, that's really, you know, my seed as out of growth. Like that's my main job, right? Is identifying those next segments, making sure we capitalize on those. >> That's a really interesting point. >> [clears throat] >> Basically winning the retail investor market as a and then kind of like looking at this as a staged approach to earning, I guess, the credibility to be the protocol or the asset management firm that's positioned for institutions, right?

And looking at this as like a domino effect of adoption. I think that's a really neat insight. Um and as you mentioned, Maple is the leading, you know, on-chain asset management protocol um with I believe 3.64 billion AUM uh essentially allocated. And and so, I want to do one last like zoomed out high-level question before we go deeper under the hood here, but like zooming out, really what do you think is the leading reason why uh behind the success in such a competitive market? What is it about Maple's positioning?

Is it, you know, security? Is it the guarantees? Is it the relationships that's allowed and really driven this growth? >> Yeah. Yeah, it's really a combination of a lot of different factors, right?

Like for something to go right, you sort of have a lot of things that need to line up. Um I'd say a couple of the key um factors have been just relentless focus on product, right? Like product is always first. You need to have a great product. So, we always uh ask feedback from our clients and we make sure we iterate towards having great products.

Um and then to your point, the relationship building is extremely important, right? Like we will go the extra mile for our clients and that really compounds. So, most businesses referral based, you know, people give you introductions to others they're working with. And that directly builds trust, right? So, we we're very focused on that.

Then the other thing to your point, I think has been that pragmatic scaling, uh you know, back in the day when I started 4 years ago, you know, it was 50K checks, 100K checks, you know, we were just on the phone all day long um with high net worth individuals, right? Like uh getting those in and you know, back then we were about like 9 million in TVL, right? And being 9 million in TVL, like you're not going to close a partnership of 100 million, right? Um so, if you're too focused on that, you're actually going to lose the rest. So, you got to be focused at that level on how can I get the next million in, right?

The next 5 million, the next 10 million. And we always had this ruthless focus on on that like incremental growth. But then once you know, you then also need to marry that with the exponential curves. So, um because you know, like once you sort of have grown that 10x, then you're kind of saturated, right? If you can keep focusing on that market, then it will just continue linear from there.

So, you need to sort of at the right moment in time then choose that next inflection point that you're ready for the next market, right? Where okay, once you are you know, 150 million in TVL, then you can close a $100 million partnership, right? >> Mhm. >> Um so, you need to recognize that moment in time. And then uh and then do it.

So, so that is that's how it can really exciting. And um yeah, so I think those are some of the factors that uh that contributed and just keep going, right? I'm in the bear market. It's hard, right? Like a lot of people give up.

But, this is actually when you build the foundation, you know, when you set yourself up for the next uh leg of growth in the bull market. Uh you know, crypto is still very cyclical, right? Like everything is still very much related to prices and things like that. And it will keep that way for a little while to come. I think stablecoin adoption is now the first segment where it's non-cyclical, right?

And the adoption rates keep That's why I'm saying we're on an S curve because the adoption rates keep accelerating. Uh And typically S curves, you know, last about 5 years, right? If you look to sort of historic S curves across many different technologies. Even the radio, which is pretty funny, I learned it actually this way. The radio, which is like almost 100 years ago, right?

That it that it got out. Um got adopted by uh the vast majority of people in 7 years, right? So, just think about that. From almost nobody having a radio to pretty much everybody having a radio in 7 years. So, and that's how fast And now think about how much more interconnected the world is, right?

How much faster it moves. Um so, we're going to see a similar speed there in terms of how all these products are got getting adopted. But, that's why it's called an S curve because you have the first You know, and this can take a long time, right? Because for the infrastructures to place, the regulations are in place. You know, it takes a long time.

So, but now we're finally at that stage. So, that's That's what we've all been hoping for. >> Super interesting. >> Yeah, I mean, I love the insight. You're looking at this incrementally until it hits this adoption, you know, inflection point on the S curve, where you have, let's say, like enough AUM or enough TVL to really, you know, back the credibility of an entity that can now hit this massive growth curve.

This is exciting. Um also interesting how you looked at this through the lens of you know, crypto's cyclical nature, right? I don't want to go take too much time on this one, but you know, eat when you hit the S curve through a product like let's say like Maple, are you still subject to bull versus bear market? Cuz you mentioned stablecoins. Stablecoins have hit now this like inflection on on the curve here.

Um and even though, you know, it's a typical bear market as you would describe historically, it's not really a bear market in stablecoin sector. Does this apply to sectors outside of stablecoins like Maple? Are you know, once you hit this inflection, are you no longer as subject to uh you know, the the cyclical nature of Web3? >> Yes. Yeah, 100%.

Yeah, you hit the nail on the head, so I think ultimately the lifeblood of Maple is stablecoins, right? Like the more stablecoins there are, the more the bigger dam of deposits. >> Mhm. >> And stablecoins have historically been cyclical, right? If you look to the stablecoins in circulation, uh if you look to the previous cycle, like it actually went down after the top in 2021.

Um but now that's not the case, to your point, right? It's still growing because the use cases are applicable outside of crypto, right? It is not just you know, trading and crypto use cases. So, fully you're fully spot on. Uh this might be the last cycle, right?

In that sense. Of course, prices will always go through cycles, but uh yield products, I think, you know, it might be the There will always be cycles in like yields and levels and you know, things like that, but fundamentally in terms of user adoption, I think we uh we're hitting that uh that curve up now. >> Yeah, it's exciting. I hope you're right. I I thought almost this last cycle was, you know, the end of cycles.

Um and then Interesting. >> on the Bitcoin side, like the you know, Bitcoin will be in a cycle for a while longer. The reason is that most Bitcoin holders believe in the cycle, right? 60 to 65% of Bitcoin holders, the OGs, right? The whales, they believe in the cycle.

So, as long as they believe in the cycle and they control most of the Bitcoin, cycles will keep happening. And you can see this very nicely in the long-term holder chart, right? They started selling sort of like August last year progressively. And you know, once the long-term holders start accumulating, then Bitcoin will likely go up again. So, I think Bitcoin will continue to be cyclical as long as that's the case, right?

Of course, at some point it will be so distributed and you know, institutions will control most of it or retail through institutions, right? Through different ETFs and things. But that's going to take a while, right? So, I think Bitcoin itself, but to your point, stablecoins are you know, always used to be correlated, but now they're kind of splitting out. And ultimately, Maple is more correlated to stablecoins than to Bitcoin, right?

So, so yeah. >> Yeah, thank you. It's very interesting the positioning of the product as it relates to the cyclical nature of Web3 and the position you guys are in for that. I want to go Let's I I'd love to zoom in a little bit. Let Let's spend some time ideally looking under the hood, you know, from the yield generation side of Maple Finance.

And maybe I can phrase this as a high level and you can take us a bit deeper here, but let's say I as a retail investor, I go in I purchase, you know, Syrup USDC. Can you take us through kind of how this looks as to next steps on the Maple side, you know? How What's going on under the hood? How is yield being generated? Yeah, if you know, the the process from when capital is entering Maple into how yield is being generated and uh you know, provided back to you know, the retail allocator.

>> Yeah. Now, so you know, imagine you have like USDC in your wallet or your app, right? Um then you allocate it into a Maple product. So, it goes to our USDC. Then you essentially exchange your USDC for serUSD.

serUSD is just the default token, right? That is just your part of the share in the pool. And then the USDC comes in with us and we will allocate it out in loans, right? So, you know, let's say there's uh 10,000 people depositing, you know, $1,000. Uh you know, we'll issue like a $10 million loan, right?

To an institutional borrower. So, we'll sort of aggregate all the deposits and issue loans to uh to borrowers. And the loans are always over-collateralized, right? So, we always take way more collateral than what we uh what we issue out in stablecoins. And then uh the yield accrues in real time.

So, you know, we sort of look at all the loans. We look at the average interest rate, right? And that's not us, it's just the smart contracts, right? It's all automated. And they'll just take the average sort of interest rate on the loans, you know, minus our fees, and that accrues to you in real time.

So, you know, if you deposit uh today, right? $10,000, and the yield is 5%, right? And you want to withdraw tomorrow because you need to buy a car or whatever, uh then even in a one-day you've actually earned the yield, right? So, the second you deposit to the second you withdraw, you earn yield. Uh and it just accrues in real time.

You don't have to claim it or do anything. So, it's a really simple, elegant product. Uh it's very user-friendly, great UX. And um you know, it also is fully transparent, right? You you can see all the loans, you can see all the collateral.

We have proof of reserves, we're independently audited and verified. Um, so, you know, it's uh it has all the benefits that the blockchain creates. >> Right. And [clears throat] and beyond this over-collateralized lending, um there as I understand there's two other additional yield strategies. So, there's futures basis trading and DeFi LP liquidity provisioning.

Um, to what extent how big of an you know, how big of a percentage of the overall yield generation are these other two categories within Maple? >> Yeah. Yeah, so uh the trading side, um you know, so right now it is pretty much 100% over-collateralized lending, right? That's really the core strategy. Uh if we change that, you know, we'll announce it.

To your point, we are working on trading as a as an additional yield source, right? And adding that to the mix. Sort of like adding that to our core competences. Uh we've been doing a lot of testing and, you know, uh setting up systems and things like that. Um, so uh so that is coming for sure.

You can also imagine that during a bull market, right? That is that is a very interesting uh source of yield. Um, and then on the LP side, so we've actually pulled out all of our DeFi lending positions uh about 2 months ago, right? When all of the sort of like the big uh DeFi saga went down and, you know, there was sort of like every week there was a big hack. Uh you know, we sort of decided to pull over DeFi lending positions.

So, we have no exposure right now on that side. Um that's also communicated widely to, you know, our partners and users. So, for now we'll just be fully focused on T-bills, right? For the sort of cash management and liquidity. And then over-collateralized uh lending.

>> Mhm. >> And that's also what we see like most interested in, you know, from LPs. >> And so if we're in a bull market and you guys are looking into a futures basis trading as as a larger portion of the strategy, is this more for improving yield on a given product, right? Increasing the yield or is it more for allocating idle capital? Or suppose a combination of the two, but really where would this come into play within the strategy?

>> Yeah. Yeah, so to your point about you know, it's probably both, right? You know, as an asset manager, you know, you're always like every strategy is constrained in size, right? Like there's no strategy that can take infinite amounts of capital. Now, over-collateralized lending is a very big market, right?

It's currently estimated, I believe, to be about 50 billion in outstanding loans. It might be bigger now or you know, sort of like in that range. But we have about 1.5 billion now in outstanding loans, right? So we're about three 3% of the market. Um so there's a lot of room for growth.

And then the market itself is growing as well, right? So you know, we think that we can continue to grow a lot just by being focused on that market. But you know, we have large ambitions, right? We we want to grow to tens of billions, you know, and ultimately hundreds of billions in assets under management. So we need to add, you know, new yield strategies to the mix to be able to, you know, absorb all that capital and uh you know, keep driving strong yields to our users.

And also different users have different pro you know, risk profiles, different needs on the yield side, right? Some users want to earn higher yields, right? Some some want lower yields, some want instant liquidities, you know, some are happy with some duration. So, you know, we want to sort of like over time build out these different products for different user types. Like right now it's a little bit, you know, one size fits all, right?

We we have this these products and they're great, right? And and most people are very happy with them. Um but you know, over time we also want to empower users and partners, especially with uh with choice. >> Perfect opportunity cuz this is where I wanted to pick your brain next is um Yeah, I mean, you're mentioning how different users have different appetites for risk, um different requirements, and I think you uh sitting at a head of growth at Maple have such an interesting insight into this. How are the retail investors differing from institutional allocators in terms of um their needs, right?

Like how do the needs of these two different segments differ um across all of the different categories? Or or are they overall relatively similar right now, right? When we're looking at let's say um the yield uh that they're interested in, you know, maybe like institutions need less yield than retail allocators. Um when they're looking at, let's say um the collateralization ratio, the security of it overall. I'd love to get your thoughts on it.

How are institutions differing from the needs of retail investors or similar? >> Yeah. Yeah, so great question. So I'd say in general there's sort of like three broad buckets. So you have like the DeFi native users, then you got like retail, and then you have let's say the institutions, right?

So if we go with start with the DeFi, in DeFi they're extremely, you know, they're very focused on like smart contract security, proof of reserves, you know, making sure like everything is fully transparent, and really the core ethos of DeFi, right? Instant liquidity, you know, like all these things are really important. And in general, higher yield hurdles, right? DeFi users have you know, they want higher yield, but that's what they're used to. Um Then retail users are lowest cost of capital, right?

They have the lowest demand for yield because their alternative is a bank account yielding 1%, right? Or 2% depending on your jurisdiction. So, that's actually a very attractive area and that's also where we're very we really believe in is sort of the whole democratization of yield to these people, right? Because right now, you know, again, they only have access to these very simple yields that are very low and there's also intermediaries like just making massive profits. And we really believe in actually giving everybody access to good yield.

So, that's actually I think where most of the opportunity is. And the way they decide is they trust brands, right? Like they trust a fintech app they're using, they trust a neo bank logo. You know, it's fully based on trust. So, if they see that their favorite app where they, you know, do all their finances has listed a certain product, they will sort of like trust it.

You know, not necessarily automatically, but close to automatically, right? They might read some things and if it sounds good, you know, they'll deposit into it. Um and then you got the institutions and that's where the real fun happens, right? They they will send you, you know, due diligence questionnaires of 100 pages. Um and you know, you close those deals take months and months to close because, you know, you have to first talk to like, you know, five people on their risk team, you know, three people on their legal team and, you know, goes on their credit team, it goes on and on.

So, and in general they just have long list of questions and that's good, right? Like that's their job. So, in and in general to get access to the retail market, you have to deal with an institution first, right? Or a fintech, right? And and like nobody just yolos and like lists our product, right?

Like we have to go through deep due diligence cycles and and that's also what we're great at, that, we've done many of those. So we know, yeah, we have the answer to every question, right? Um and in general, they really like the over-collateralized lending strategy. It's just a very elegant, simple strategy. You know, the collateral trades 24/7, 365.

Uh it's very liquid. You know, it's really easy to understand. You know, it has a lot of benefits. And I think a lot of reasons why this is sort of like the first yield strategy that a lot of these players will adopt. >> Yeah, I want to take this to go deeper into the institutional side.

You mentioned the onboarding pipeline or whatnot for institutions is much longer. They're going through all of these due diligence processes. It's probably a much more comprehensive review on their side. Do you find that when you're having conversations with these more institutional allocators, um there are I mean, I have to I kind of have two questions on this. One is that there's still hurdles basically for them.

Uh not just for Maple Finance, but the overall comfort and familiarity with DeFi. I mean, I assume so, um but then this probably enables you guys to cater more crypto-native institu- uh institutions, right? So, um curious how it looks within this side. But more so, you know, as they're going through these due diligence processes, do you Are you getting like one-off requests from institutions that are challenging you guys to innovate within the product itself? Um one example of this would be like cover um for insurance.

I always have I always have this thesis, um and I love to pick the brains of people like yourself as to like are institutions requiring insurance as they may, you know, with like a uh a typical um engagement um uh for an asset for for a capital allocator. Um Yeah, what What are What does this kind of look like in the institutional conversations? Are they nitpicky on requiring more, you know, one-off solutions from you guys or are they willing to more, you know, just adopt what has been built within the core framework of the product? >> Yeah. Yeah, excellent question.

So, there's sometimes they have custom requirements for sure, right? Especially on legal structure or um you know, they might want to have tranching, right? Where there's like a senior tranche and a junior tranche and they like to be the senior. Um you know, the other thing is that we have our collateral in qualified custody uh in some cases, right? Uh at least in institutional custody.

And, you know, of course if you have qualified custodians, there's also insurance there, right? So, uh there's also the option to uh to sort of like have that included. So, you know, I think those are some of the elements that uh that we focus on. Uh and in general, to your point, it is most of mostly of the uh you sort of like conversations. It's not that every institution has a custom requirement.

It's more that they all sort of like trend into the same direction, right? Like they, you know, they all It's like a rational path that you follow. And Maple, we have been set up from the beginning to actually cater to these institutions, right? So, that's why we use the custody, right? Instead of having the smart contracts, right?

Like that is something that is very important to them. That's why we use uh legal docs with our borrowers, right? Um >> Yeah. >> And we sign uh lending agreements. That's why we um you know, we have recourse to the borrower's balance sheet.

We do KYC AML on the borrower, right? So, uh we always know where the funds are going, right? We're never just funding you know, sort of like unknown entities. Uh you know, the whole way we've done our like uh you know, legal structure. So, I would say that, you know, we have sort of designed our whole product already with all of this in mind.

Uh so that's why most of the time, you know, institutions are sort of, you know, quite comfortable from the start and there's just a couple nuances uh there. >> I I think it's really interesting where you guys sit in this like um intersection of Web3 ethos and um appeal to institutions, right? You're mentioning the transparency, the proof of reserves, the overall design. And again, this suggests back to this era, the the Maple terminology era, the original Web3 like um Maple's founded in 2018. Like this is the era of transparency, decentralization ethos.

Um and then as you mentioned a little bit going into K you know, having legal agreements with borrowers, for example. This this really then caters more to the needs of institutions. So I think this is fascinating where the product offering sits to um to, you know, support the needs of both the Web3 natives and uh the institutions. And you know, everybody in Web3 is a I'll make us I'll make a claim here. You can refute me, please, if you disagree, but I think everybody in Web3 is is upon the agreement or the consensus here that um institutions are now really actually onboarding and coming on chain.

I think we've seen a mass uh we've we've started to hit a bit of this adoption curve in the last like, let's say, 12 to 16 months. Um and and as you sit where you sit on the desk here, is the conversation now evolving? Is it less now education and just getting them more comfortable with Web3? I'm very curious to see how this conversation may or may not have changed over the last 12 months for you. And if it, you know, aligns with the general thoughts of thesis of Web3 natives that institutions are now much more interested and that, you know, they're much more educated in in in coming on chain here.

>> Yeah. Definitely. Yeah, Now, say uh for sure, you know, institutions are getting a lot more educated. You know, it's we don't have to explain anymore what a stablecoin is, right? Uh in some cases, we still need to explain like what a fault is and things like that, but you know, most of the time that's also pretty clear now.

Um So, yeah, I would say in general, yes. I would still say though that most of the flows in the next, you know, 12 to 18 months are going to come from, uh you know, the more fintechy types of players. Right? So, the players that are just very innovative in in, you know, go try five, right? Like just outside of crypto.

Um so, you're going to see a lot of big product launches in the next 12 to 18 months. And then from there on, you're going to see a lot of the real institutions, right? Like the old-school, you know, 150-year-plus logos, right? Uh like you'll see those then really starting to move. So, it is it's going to be a very natural trend.

Um and because it takes for them a time long time to understand something, do something with it, you know. Uh and they need to understand the business model, right? The business case, like how are they going to commercialize it, etc. >> Yeah, makes sense. And and to your point, they are in the room right now.

It just is a longer onboarding. Right. Like at um DAS NYC, I think probably a month and a half ago, uh the events were more exclusive than your typical I guess like a smaller group than your typical Web3 conference, but filled with these larger, like you suggested, like 100-year-plus institutions who have been um who have been around for so much time. They're in the room. I think they're listening and the conversations I can agree are evolving.

It's very interesting. You mentioned they they're we're very well familiar with stables, and now to your point, it's I think the vault infrastructure is very much appealing to them as like the flagship institutional use case for DeFi yield right now. Um so super interesting points. Um I want to I think we're coming up on on the half hour here, so I want to be sensitive to your time and just kind of like looking ahead a little bit. Um looking forward for the future of Maple Finance, you know, maybe the next 3 to 5 years.

You mentioned your goal is not just I mean, you have it it's amazing to hear this, right? With 3.6 billion under management, you're saying we want to get to 10 billion plus and then 100 billion plus. What does it look like for you guys to get there? Is it Do you feel like there's still tons of product evolution required or is it more the onboarding um component that's necessary to to, you know, reach these these aspirations that you have with Maple Finance? >> Yeah.

Yeah, so I think that there's a lot of things required, right? Like it's there's a lot of execution ahead for sure. Um but I think in general, you know, all the world's dollars are going to become stable coins and many of those stable coins are going to be looking for yield, right? Like not all of them, but many of them. So and you know, we want to be sort of the best provider of that um and be among uh and partner with, you know, all these great existing brands and you know, companies that will start to power their stablecoin yield products.

Um we there is of course many new products that we will launch, right? To make all of that happen. So there's a lot of products in the pipeline that we're working on, right? That we'll release this year. Um some are together with a partner, you know, some are sort of um just like broader products, right?

For the whole market. So yeah, there's definitely a lot of product launches of things do, a lot of execution, a lot of deals we need to close, but I think the journey is pretty clear, right? And as long as we keep focusing on sort of like the next big opportunity, close that out, the next big opportunity, right? We'll snowball our way to you know those very ambitious exciting targets. >> Getting back to your point on incremental growth leads to exponential growth.

I think that's one of the >> Exactly. >> That's a great tip from somebody who's leading who who's heading up growth at Maple. So thank you for this. Thank you for the call and the time today. I think we're probably running up.

You probably have to jump to another call here. So I want to close out I want to maybe give you the chance if there's anything that we didn't touch on regarding Maple that you that you'd like to share for anybody listening and or otherwise, you know, for those who want to go deeper into this, explore the different products, maybe you know, I'm getting touch with the team to chat and take you know, the next step in their journey here. What are the best resources that you would refer somebody to go to to take this step? >> Yep. Yeah, so you know, definitely go to the website, right?

maple.finance. There's a lot of things there, right? Case studies and you know, articles, announcements, all the product information. Always free to ping me on Telegram or send me an email, right? Or add me on LinkedIn.

So always happy to chat if you know, if you need yield for your product. And you know, overall just very excited and the next few weeks, like I think the first couple months of the year, you know, have been rough for DeFi, but there has been a lot of like building under the hood and sort of like getting ready for the second half year with a lot of like sort of big product launches. So might sound a bit abstract, but I'm sure you know, and viewers that will remember this and sort of like watch their Twitter feed over the next few weeks will understand you know all the exciting things that are that are coming. >> Excellent. I love to end it on an optimistic note here.

Um that's amazing. I'll be keeping this in mind as I scroll the timeline and the updates over the next couple weeks and months here. Um so excited for where we're at with the state of DeFi. Um and Martin thank you for joining us on the podcast today on the yellow. It's really great to chat with you and appreciate the insights that you've shared with us.

>> Thanks Dylan. Yeah, thanks Dylan and go next. Hopefully that >> Let's go. All right, excellent. All right, thank you Martin.

Thank you everybody who joined in today. Cheers. >> Thanks.