Protocol
Maple: The Institutional Lending Giant
Maple Finance has almost 2xd this month, and it’s still looking strong. We wanted give you guys a quick 80/20 at this RWA leader.
What is it? Maple describes itself as an onchain asset manager.
It is focused on lending & borrowing for institutions. So it wasn’t easily accessible for DeFi degens. It has some friction like KYC & accreditation.
Enter Syrup. It’s a yield protocol from Maple that provides the Maple institutional yield to anyone in DeFi. syrupUSDC is their yield-bearing stablecoin. And it has impressive numbers.
- Market cap passed $884M. That’s 10x growth YTD.
- It can be used further in DeFi. $589M syrupUSDC is already deployed to DeFi across EVM chains and Solana.
The yield for syrupUSDC comes from Maple.
How does Maple work? Their system is centered around Lending Pools. Its native token is $SYRUP.
Lenders, including institutions and accredited individuals, deposit digital assets such as USDC or other stablecoins into these pools to earn interest.
These pools are managed by ‘Pool Delegates‘ who are responsible for evaluating borrowers and setting loan terms.
Borrowers, usually crypto companies & financial institutions, will register on the Maple WebApp and undergo a review process conducted by Pool Delegates. Since they’ll assess financial health and reputation, they can offer loans with less collateral than competitors.
You can understand the system via the image below.
Maple loans are usually fixed-rate, short-term, and backed by some collateral to mitigate credit risks. Below are some reasons why Maple looks bullish.
#1. Metrics & buyback.
Sophisticated designs don’t matter if the protocol isn’t growing. Fortunately for Maple, the protocol is growing at an insane rate.
The chart below shows the impressive growth of Assets Under Management.
Unlike many useless governance tokens, the value of this growth is captured by $SYRUP.
In Q1, Maple directed 20% of its revenue toward buying back $SYRUP. ~$235k was used to buy 1.96M $SYRUP. Similarly, they’ll use 20% of the Q2 revenue to buy back $SYRUP.
In Q2, Maple has already made more than 2x the revenue in Q1.
#2. Team & target
Maple Finance was founded in 2019. The team has deep expertise in both TradFi & blockchain.
They are long-term players with resilience. Maple is one of the rare protocols that has survived multiple years.
In 2022, Maple faced a $36 million default by Orthogonal Trading due to FTX’s collapse. It was a big hit for the then fledgling protocol.
But they didn’t just focus on recovering funds. They responded by launching Maple 2.0 that upgraded their mechanisms.
Their current goal is to reach $4B AUM by Year-End 2025. Before we hit the half-year mark, Maple has already achieved >50% of their goal. Right now, the Maple AUM is ~$2.5B.
This would imply ~$35M in annual protocol revenue. Imagine if the 20% buyback policy remains in place, $7M would be dedicated to acquiring $SYRUP from the market and distributed as rewards to stakers.
#3. Trillion-dollar RWA trend.
The tokenized RWA market is growing rapidly. From $8.6B in early 2024, the sector has grown to ~$24.5B. That’s a gigantic 179% increase.
Maple is at the forefront of this trend. AQRU’s U.S. Treasury tax credit pools (14% APY) is an example.
It is also building a reliable track record of working with top institutions as well. Cantor Fitzgerald is a top global investment bank and currently manages Tether’s $100B+ Treasury portfolio. They’re working with Maple for their $2 billion Bitcoin financing business.
These factors will enable Maple to benefit as the onchain RWA market grows to trillions.
Sponsored by Teller
Teller: Earn 50%+ APY Without Impermanent Loss
Farming LPs come with a problem: Impermanent Loss (IL). That 100% APY USDC/ETH pool might look great until IL wipes you out.
Imagine if you could get over 50% APY on pools without worrying about IL?
Meet Teller, a fixed-term lending platform offering lending with no pair risk, no fees dependency, and no Impermanent Loss.
How?
Teller loans don’t involve trading between assets, which fully protects your assets from IL and market volatility.
Wait, Edgy. If there’s no trading between assets, there’s no yield from fees. So, where does the yield come from?
Your yield comes from interest paid by borrowers, not trading fees. Protecting you from volatile token pairs.
How to find the best pools on Teller:
- Go to Teller
- Choose your asset and chain
- Sort the Yield column by highest return
- Start earning.
Keep in mind that you’ll incur a loan default if you don’t repay your loan on time.
But if you’re like me and want the simple yield, just lend and watch numba go up.
Ditch the spreadsheets. Teller offers high, clear, and fixed yields.
How to
Dexu.ai: Find Alpha Using Two Pages
Most of us don’t have the time (or energy) to scroll through Twitter 24/7 hunting for the next big thing in crypto.
So in today’s article, I’ll show you a super simple workflow to spot hot narratives and top-performing projects using just two pages from Dexu.ai.
(Caveat: This isn’t a full Dexu tutorial. We’re only going to cover a couple of features from two pages. But it’ll give you the 80/20.)
Step 1: Find the Hot Narratives (Overview Page)
Start at Dexu’s Overview page.
The first feature you’ll see is Narrative Price Performance. It lets you see how different crypto narratives (aka sectors) are performing across various timeframes.
It’s an easy way to spot what’s hot and what’s not.
And if you check it regularly, you’ll start to get a feel for broader market sentiment. Some narratives will pop during a bull week. But others? They stay green even when everything else is bleeding. That’s when you know you’ve found something strong.
Right now, for example, Lending is crushing it. It’s been consistently outperforming every other narrative across timeframes. Let’s dive deeper into it.
Step 2: Dig into the Sector (Sector Analysis Page)
Okay, so we’ve got a hot narrative: Lending.
But you can’t just “buy” a narrative. There aren’t any good index tokens for sectors in crypto. (At least, none that are actually useful.)
Instead, you need to zoom in and find individual projects. This is where Dexu’s Sector Analysis feature becomes your best friend. (Caveat: the available data provided by Dexu will vary depending on the sector.)
One unique indicator from Dexu is called “Rankings“. It uses a unique formula that combines price performance, trading volume, mindshare performance, unlock schedules, and more to give you a ranked list of projects.
Is it perfect? No. You still have to do your own research. But it’s a great way to quickly see who’s leading the pack.
There are several features that provide different perspectives on the price performance of different projects in the sector. You can use them to find strong projects in the sector. Again, pay attention to projects that hold strong even when others are in red.
For further fundamental analysis, Dexu gives you more data. Some of the charts include: Volume, Market Cap, Distance to ATH, Token Unlocks, and Funding Rates.
The lending sector analysis also provides charts of ratios: volume/MC, MC/FDV, and Mindshare/FDV. These ratios can help you identify undervalued gems. A high ratio usually means that the project is relatively undervalued.
In the Volume/Market Cap chart for Lending protocols, Spark is punching way above its weight. It’s doing much more volume than its competitors, relative to its market cap.
Sounds bullish, right?
Well, hold on. When you check the MC/FDV ratio, Spark ranks last. This tells us that its high Volume/MC ratio might be due to low circulating supply
Context matters.
Dexu gives you a ton of valuable data. It’s not perfect (it’s still missing some onchain metrics like active addresses), but those features are coming soon.
Ideally, when most of the indicators for a project are positive, that’s a gem. But even then, I wouldn’t blindly ape in.
Once you’ve found something interesting, do a deep dive on that specific project. Dexu even has individual project pages.
I don’t have space to cover that in this article. But if you’re interested, hit reply and let me know. I’ll write a follow-up!
Dexu is one of the fastest ways to stay ahead in crypto. Bookmark it. Add it to your weekly research flow.
🚀 DeFi Catalysts
Arbitrum has passed the DeFi Renaissance Incentive Program (DRIP). It’ll focus on specific assets and activities across Arbitrum.
NEAR Protocol is discussing cutting NEAR’s annual inflation from 5% to 2.5% to reduce excessive token dilution.
World Chain has enabled priority blockspace for humans. Transactions from humans will be prioritized over bot transactions.
f(X) Protocol introduced sPOSITIONs: a new way to short the market with fixed leverage, liquidation brake, and zero funding costs
Morpho introduced Morpho Loans via the Gelato network. It allows exchanges, wallets, and other companies to offer crypto-backed loans within their products.
Aptos introduced Shelby. It claims to be Web3’s first cloud-grade infrastructure. It’s designed not just to store data, but to serve it.
Lido has released the testnet-2 for Lido v3. It has several improvements, like UX improvements, upgraded stETH vault contracts, and more.
Moonberg Terminal went live. They’ve also allocated an airdrop for top crypto yappers. For others, there’s something promised at TGE.
ZkSync introduced Airbender. It claims to be the fastest open-source RISC-V zkVM. It’ll make Ethereum cheaper and faster.
📰 Industry News
US FHFA (Federal Housing Finance Agency) issues an order to count cryptocurrencies as an asset for a mortgage.
Polymarket is raising $200M led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund at a $1B valuation. It has become a Unicorn despite being banned in the US.
Kraken has launched a global money app allowing low-cost, borderless transfers across 110 countries using over 300 assets called Krak.
Bit Digital is shutting down its BTC mining operations, will convert BTC into ETH, and become an ETH-staking and treasury company.
Fiserv, a Fintech and payments company, will launch a digital-asset platform and a new fiat-pegged stablecoin called FIUSD on Solana.
🐦⬛ X Hits
- Do L2 tokens have any potential?
- Coinbase strategy: exchange-infra-as-service
- How the USDC supply curve shapes the $CRCL valuation.
- Shady practices in the industry and transparency as a fix.
- Key concept: the singleness of money.
😂 Meme
Until next time,
Edgy
Today’s email was written by Edgy and Yayya.
DISCLAIMER: I’m NOT a financial advisor. This content is for education and information purposes only. Crypto and DeFi are risky and speculative. Please do your research before investing.
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