Is the DeFi Mullet Strategy the Best Way to Bring Finance Onchain?
Episode publishedPodcast: UnchainedUnchained
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Welcome to Unchained, your no hype resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin. Thanks for joining this livestream. Before we get started, a quick reminder, nothing you hear on Unchained is investment advice. This show is for informational and entertainment purposes only, and my guest and I may hold assets discussed in the show. For more disclosures, visit unchainedcrypto.com. Introducing Nexo, the premier digital wealth platform. Receive interest on your digital assets. Borrow against them without selling. Trade a variety of cryptocurrencies. All in one platform. Now available i
Hey, Laura. Thanks for having me on. Glad to be here.
Yeah. Excited to chat with you. So there's a number of DeFi lending protocols. Maple Finance is one of them. So just tell us what niche it occupies in this world.
Yeah, in the DeFi lending space, Maple Maple kind of crosses two interesting two interesting unique unique segments. So we do primarily institutional lending. So, Maple does not lend to retail users. Our counterparties or our clients who borrow from us typically include asset managers, trading firms, exchanges, family offices, you know, other trading, other investment management firms. And the other thing that's unique about Maple is that we are almost a hybrid. So we source capital on chain. We have Syrup USDC, Syrup USDT, which folks can deposit to through smart contracts. However, when we d
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's this interesting hybrid. So describe a little bit more about the borrowers and lenders that use Maple.
Yeah, it's a great question. So if you if you look, who would come and use Maple? Typically, typically our clients, as I mentioned at the start, are going to include prime brokers. So folks who provide margin or lending or over the counter settlement to trading firms. It also includes asset managers who might be running yield strategies on chain, for example, or they might be running liquid token strategies. And then we have family officers who might hold a, you know, hold a significant amount of crypto, but they want to take out a loan to purchase real estate, or make some other kind of inves
Okay. And then you also mentioned another key component of the Maple system, which is your stablecoin, which there's a USDC and USDT version. Explain a little bit more about how that is used.
Yeah. Now this is interesting. So you've seen over 2025, Laura, we had a ton of new stablecoins emerge. A lot of them purporting to use, you know, different trading strategies or arbitrage to generate their yield. What we decided to do was not necessarily to build a stablecoin, we have built a, call it a yield product or a savings product on top of two existing stablecoins. So on top of USDC and USDT, the yield in our in Maple's instance comes from the over collateralized loans to these institutional borrowers. So we originate a loan to them, they pay interest, that then gets passed through as
Yeah. You briefly mentioned Aave. I saw that, you know, you are now an issuer in Aave in a partnership that began in October, I think. And now you're the fastest growing issuer in Aave. Explain a little bit more about that partnership. Is is that the syrup USDC or USDT?
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