Maple’s Bet on Fintech-Powered DeFi | Martin de Rijke

Transcript

We also see at Maple like we see a lot of the large players right now are also launching these types of products right so I would expect over the next you know six months uh to see a lot of this come to life right and and for a lot of this to to become clear to um to the sort of like the full market in terms of how these D5 products are going to end end up in the hands of uh of hundreds of millions of users nothing said on Zerox research is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens This podcast is forformational purposes only and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions, not financial advice. Pokio, Ryan, and our guests may hold positions in the company's funds or projects discussed.

>> What's up, guys? Welcome back to another episode of Xerox Research. Today, I'm joined by Carlos from the research team and Martin, head of growth at Maple. Thank you for joining us, Martin. >> Yes. Yeah, great to be here. Thank you for inviting me and uh we're really excited to dive into all the topics of today. there's uh a lot of good things to cover. >> Yeah, we're also very excited. I'm very happy that I brought on Carlos as well who has been working on Maple for some time. So, I think this gonna be a very good pod. Um but maybe before we get started, um for people who may not have kept up with Maple, um do you want to give a short introduction on what you guys used to be and what you guys have become over the past two years, three years now?

>> Yes. Yeah. So, Maple is is one of the largest onchain NASA managers. So we manage about four billion in in assets and we're very focused on stable coins uh and generating yield on on stable coins and we do that by you know the core strategy we have and and we've now been running since uh since in the last three years is overcolateralized lending to institutional borrowers and that's really the niche that we've carved out for ourselves. Uh and in that area, you know, we're now the the largest onchain uh and the second largest overall in terms of u overcolateralized institutional loans in the the crypto uh ecosystem.

Uh so we issue, you know, USDC, USDT loans against, you know, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Salana, uh you know, sort of like blue chip collateral, hyperlquid as well. Uh which, you know, I'm sure we'll we'll get into I mean the story of the day, right? Hyperlid, a lot of exciting stuff happening there. Um and yeah we have partnerships with you know all the leading D5 protocols where I think a morpho sky spark um you know Athena like you know pretty much all the leading D5 protocols as well as some of the Salana players you know Camino Jupiter fluid uh and then you know we're currently very focused on expanding in fintech you know working with neo banks and that's really what we see sort of as the next

frontier of of DeFi you know DeFi sort of breaking out of it shell uh and you know finally getting mainstream adoption and I think 2026 is the year where we're going to see a lot of the the early signs of that and then I think you know over 2027 will reap you know the the fruits and we'll see a lot of growth from uh from all angles. >> Martin maybe this is a basic question but when people think about Maple they may think of a lending protocol and you describe it as an onchain asset manager. I'm curious like what is the difference between just onchain asset management and what you see broadly as just lending and how does Maple fit into that space?

>> Yes, definitely. Yeah, I think to your point like when most people hear lending protocol, they sort of think of you know everything fully on chain, right? So you you take in stable coins and you know any borrower permissionlessly can sort of take out loans and you know post collateral and then the collateral could be could be borrowed again right in some cases uh there's onchain oracles onchain liquidators so that that's sort of a typical lending protocol right a fluid morpho commamino of course there's different takes on whether you want to do it sort of monolithic or whether you want to have isolated markets and there's different design choices I would say where maple really stands out and why we don't consider ourselves a lending protocol uh is that we really

have an institutional flavor. So yes, we do have an onchain protocol, right? Uh like all of our loans are managed in the in the Maple protocol. You know, they're issued from Maple Vaults to uh to borrowers, but then there's also additional things that we do on top of that. So the collateral is held in institutional custody. um you know we have we KYC and underwrite all the borrowers right so it's permissioned uh borrowing only um where we underwrite their balance sheets you know we look at the quality of the of the counterparty and we only work with the you know sort of the best counterparties there we sign legal docs right so we have real recourse on the loans and you know also

for the borrowers right they they have certain uh certain guarantees there so yeah there's a lot of additional things we do on up and then besides that uh the reason we say asset management is because yes institutional lending is our core business um but there's also the potential for other strategies you know to be added to the mix uh and for other strategies you know to uh to generate yield on on stable coins. So that's the reason you're really positioning yourself on chain asset manager and we think that onchain asset management this has a lot of benefits. uh you know over time every asset manager will become onchain right in the same way that some point you know every company became an internet company but I think for now it's it's really you know differentiates

us from sort of traditional asset managers in terms of you know proof of reserves transparency into the strategies being able to follow uh you know the flows on chain um you know receiving a a vault token right like when you deposit uh having the ability for you know fintex for example, to offer our products in a non-custodial way to their users, right? Where their users are really cying custodying the assets. So, yeah, there's so many benefits, you know, happy to get in get into all them, but there's um yeah, there's a real power in Unchair that's a benefit.

>> Yeah, I I really like that. And one of the things I like about Maple is the vertically integrated strategy and the opinionated decisions you can make about risk. For instance, you can see it on the high quality collateral that you guys have backing the loans, which is like 75% BTC. Uh, which is something that you just don't see on like uh normal lending protocols. And I imagine that's somewhat easier to underwrite as a lender if you know that 75% of what you're lending against is just Bitcoin, right? That much that must be a lot simpler. Um, let's talk a little bit about, you know, just stable coins and the market timing generally like why do you think that stable coins are still

like growing while a lot of DeFi still fits it still feels very quiet? >> Yes. Yeah. You're getting to the heart of sort of like where we are in the cycle and and to your point like one of the most important questions right now. So I would say there's a real world outside of DeFi, right? like when we're sort of in in DeFi, it's very easy to sort of like think in the constraints of DeFi uh and think in the constraints of, you know, DeFi users and protocols and, you know, people having to create wallets and sort of like to be able to interact with uh with with DeFi apps.

But I think there's this whole new parallel world out there which, you know, USDT has always tapped into, right, for a few years already. But I think um you know USDC and other emerging stable coins are really tapping into that right now which is actual real users using stable coins in everyday life right for payments for saving uh to uh to receive their salary in um you know to just really run their life on stable coins. And I think we're seeing a lot of that right now and adoption there is is is going very fast. I was talking yesterday for example with uh with red. pay uh you know they're growing massively in especially latam Latin America where you know for users

it's a real benefit to to use stable coins over sort of like the local currencies you know they can pay everywhere with it now um it protects them from inflation right they get access to all these new financial products that they previously didn't have access to uh to before so yeah I think there's this real parallel world going on which is completely different from DeFi um where you know mainstream consumers are actually starting to use the benefits of stable coins and stable coins is just the leading indicator right like you can never use Maple without a stable coin. So, you know, the first step is to to have the financial world, you know, run on stable coins.

And then the second step is, you know, all these new products that are unlocked uh with stable coins, you know, and yield is typically not the first product that people think about, right? Typically, the first product is more, you know, payments and sort of being able to use it in in in real life. Um, you know, trading, payments, those are typically the first things people do. But then yield is a very natural follow-up from that, right? Um as people get you know the beginning people typically don't switch over their whole life right to the new solution they sort of have their traditional bank account and then they open up you know like a neo bank account or fintech account or wallet and they start running part of their life from it uh but then

over time as they build trust as they build confidence as they see all the benefits that that it creates you know they will start o moving over more and more of their assets to this new solution and then yield becomes very important. important, right? Because you don't want to then have, you know, half of your net worth or, you know, half of your savings sitting idle, uh, you know, doing nothing. So, I think yield is is sort of the next step in that evolution. Uh, but it's extremely encouraging to see that, you know, crypto is finally living up to its promise, right, which is, you know, all these beautiful real world use cases.

One thing you mentioned there that was interesting is like this trust aspect of people move slowly into onchain yield their stable coins and then slowly build that up. Um I'm curious when you see that happening fully. We still have quite I mean the a RS stuff is I guess the most recent thing but we've had other exploits. We've had I wouldn't call that one an exploit but like um we've had other issues with lending markets. we've had other issues with yield markets. How do you see this shift away from um like traditional financial tools towards onchain given that you can get reasonable yield on trady right now

compared to on onchain? >> Yeah, that's a key question. I think a big part of it will be you know people trusting the the the platforms they already use right and and those platforms giving access to to these DeFi products. Um so you know if you go into your favorite Neo bank app you know um and you you know just the one you're currently using right and there you know you could use a D5 product or D5 platform like that would be a big differentiator right you you would trust it a lot more because it has been fed by the platform and so I I think that's going to be very important and we also see at Maple like we see a lot of the large players right now are also launching these types of products right so I would expect over

the next you know six months uh to see a lot of this come to life, right? And and for a lot of this to to become clear to um to to sort of like the full market in terms of how these DeFi products are going to end end up in the hands of uh of hundreds of millions of users. There's always sort of the DeFi niche, right? There will always be um you know just people that are very passionate about finance that spend a lot of time in their portfolios, right? That will continue to use DeFi because there's just more opportunity, right? like in a in a large a large NEO bank is not going to make available, you know, a 10% or 15% DeFi loop, right? Um that is just not their their business. But those loops are still going to exist, right? I

mean, they're going to be here a year from now, 5 years from now, 10 years from now, right? There will always be these new novel opportunities. There will always be new protocols, new assets launching. There will always be uh opportunities. So, of course, you know, more during bull markets than during bare markets. So I think there will always be a cohort of of of just D5 power users that are going to be using these types of products like onchain and you know they might leave temporarily but just for the love of the game right they're going to come back um and then I think it will also become more and more institutional so there will be you know you're already seeing a lot of market neutral funds right who are running sophisticated uh DeFi strategies I think that's only going to grow and you know

we'll we'll see uh ultimately ely all finance move on chain, right? Like I saw the other day that um you know there might be sort of a green light for tokenized equities coming on chain. I mean that is going to be huge, right? We're seeing hyperlid take off. Uh you know right now the volumes are not big enough for you know the Citadels and the Jane Streets and you know these types of companies to to really um you know put like full teams on it to to uh you know for like arbitrage and things like that. But all of that is going to come right as these products scale, as more and more liquidity flows into it, you know, these these types of teams are going to put more and more resources into it. And that's only going to make the markets more efficient, you know, more scaled

out, um, and, you know, much more accessible for, uh, for normal day users. So, so I think all of those things are are really finally coming together. Um yes these hacks they they lead to uh you know we have to explain it and of course you know tell to our counterparties why you know Maple security is topnotch and things like that um but it's also in some way um you know if you look to the actual things that are happening under the hood right it's not that you know a smart contract that was existent for three years suddenly got hacked right u there's typically you know very clear reasons why it happened and there's also very good ways that we can prevent these types of things by you know investing a

bit more security having more layers you know um so I think in general like all these things are solvable and and we'll work through them um and um you know I I haven't really seen it decrease institutional interest and then one thing that we kind of brought up a few times is this idea of fintex moving in do you see Maple sitting on the back end of that or do you see Maple launching a uh consumer focused product as well. >> Yes. Yeah. So, great question. Um so, kind of the way I think about it, there's kind of like four layers right now. Um and Carlos and I, we actually had a really good discussion on that a few weeks back. So, you know, you kind of have like the fintech, right? Call it

like a financial, you know, like I like to call it financial super apps, right? And right now you got crypto exchanges, you know, Coinbase, OKX, Binance. Then you have like, you know, sort of like the fintex, right? which is like Robin Hood and and um you know Revolute and and these types of players you know some of them have banking licenses other ones are are getting them. Uh then you have you know large crypto wallets right MetaMask Phantom and ultimately if you look at all these players like they're all are sort of like setting themselves up for the same end game right which is you know be a financial super app where users can just do all of their financial life right whether that's you know receiving their salary whether that's trading whether that's yield whether that's payments you know uh prediction

markets right like and all of these things options right you know all these players ultimately will have like that full product suite, right? The ones that keep growing and and uh so that's sort of like layer one. Then layer two is more like the infrastructure, right? Like the vaults, you know, like Morpho is is a really good good example there. FedEda, there's other players. Um and they typically then get integrated into these players, right? And they they receive, you know, the capital in to uh to then allocated on chain. Then in some cases, you have a third layer which is the curators, right? Depending a little bit on the model. uh most of the time you know that's the case right morpho you of course got the curator model they they sort of invented it uh and then you know feda got like a vault manager right

there's different words for it and essentially what they do is they they are responsible for taking in the capital and allocating it it allocating it across opportunities right whether that's directly into lending markets or whether that is in assets right such as um syrup USDC and then at the bottom layer so sort of like the fourth layer you have the asset manageer the players who actually generate the yield, right? Um, and I think that's really where Maples is. So, we are actually partners with the infrastructure players, right? Like Sworo, we're partners with the curators um because they need places to allocate the capital, right, at scale.

They need places to actually generate the yield on on the stable coins. And you know right now there's like a few strategies that have really been proven out at scale. You know institutional lending is one. You got permissionless lending on chain right is another one. Uh you got the basis trade right that Athena has really um pioneered which of course works very well in bull markets. You know in bare markets there's a little bit less opportunity right but they they're still able to deploy scale into that. Um and you know there will be more and more opportunities coming on chain right there will be some RWAs there will be onchain native opportunities um so yeah I think that that is ultimately the way it's going to play

out and you know the these players need players you know that generate yield at scale in a in a properly riskmanaged institutional way >> I mean I guess there's a lot to unpack there but one thing I would like to ask is when you define like the four It's interesting to me because you mentioned that Maple is sort of complimentary to them but in my opinion or it feels like it is all also like a competitor to some of those uh layers if that makes sense like would you say that Maple is competing to some extent with B curators today uh call it steakhouse gauntlet uh etc like at the end of the

day they are onchain man onchain asset managers themselves elves no uh just in a different capacity as Maple uh could you talk to us a little bit about like those uh competitive dynamics? >> Yeah, that's a great question. Uh so I would say you know at this stage um that there's a few things right that that we look at. So number one is that the buy is growing right and DeFi right now is is extremely small. Um, so it's really important for all players to work together and try to capture this massive opportunity, right? Instead of instead of infighting. Uh, and that's why I think there's just a lot of partnerships, right? So all the names you mentioned, Stake House, Gauntlet,

you know, but also others like Centura, uh, we have really strong partnerships with, right? And and they all underwrite our assets. they allocate into our assets um you know through the the various uh lending markets u and and and vaults that they're curating. You know, ultimately, of course, you know, there's only so many deposits, right? And, you know, everybody, of course, you know, wants access to these uh to these deposits, but there's also not a world where, you know, one player is going to manage everything, right? Uh it's always good to have diversification, right? Especially for these these curators, uh they don't like to just allocate everything into one asset, right? They want to have a basket of assets. They want to have diversified

strategies. Um so I think you know there's always room for many players to win right in the same way that in the traditional world you know there's hundreds of asset managers that pro you know the man is like 10 billion plus right um so I think in general it's it's quite different from uh you know if you have like a search engine for example where it's like you know just winner takes all right Google has 80% market share you know they just dominate everything I think the asset management space is is is fundamentally very different because it requires real expertise and every single strategy has a real mode around it. You know, if you just look to overcalized lending, right?

Our bread and butter. There's it's a real mode and it's really difficult to get into that space, right? You know, building these relationships with these institutional borrowers take a lot of time, getting these legals done, on boarding, right? Building the trust, um you know, being able to allocate it size, managing the risk, right? Underwriting these assets, paying set up with all the custodians, right? there's a lot of takes a lot of time to uh to shadow all that up. Um so yeah, I think that um you know ultimately as an as a manager it's important to to know your game, right? Focus on your strengths and um you know to uh double down on sort of like the strategies you're you're best at. So I think long story short at this stage very very much partnership driven.

Uh we think we will you know it will continue like that for for a long time to come. um as you know the growth rates we're going to start seeing once these fintexs really start allocating at scale into these vaults are really going to you know sort of blow away uh anything we've seen before in the stable coin earn defi landscape. >> Yeah. Yeah. Totally. And and on that point, like I recall that in the previous uh token holder update on Maple, uh you sort of mentioned that there were there was a goal to sign three fintech partners by the end of uh Q1 or Q2 this year and that that contribute meaningful to to Maple's AUM.

Um how do you view like the state of those like integrations or partnerships? How how is that going? And could you talk to us a little bit of the challenges that maybe you you have encountered when you're trying to integrate with neo banks? Maybe neo bankanks aren't as comfortable like with a with a cryptoback product or or they still have like you know some regulatory uncertainty like what are the main like challenges that that you have today? >> Yeah. So in terms of uh those goals you know that's spot on. Uh and I would say you know watch this space right like like we're going to see some big announcements coming uh pretty soon around all of this. It always takes more

time than you want, right? Like in D5 BD, it's very much like, okay, you get on a call, you agree to something, you launch it the next week, right? I'm exaggerating a little bit, but like that's roughly it. Um, in the traditional space, the fintex space, it takes a lot more time, right? To your point, there's there's the legal teams that need to look at stuff. There's regulatory concerns. There's operational due diligence, right? And these companies take a lot of time to work through all that and they should. I mean this this is these are very important things you know making um financial products available to users is you know like deserves uh you know a lot of diligence. So you know in terms of the biggest roadblocks like it really depends of course per player and per category as well but I would say the top

three that we have seen so far is number one is sort of infrastructure and operational readiness right like these financial institutions like you know everything they've built over the last you know could be could be a decade if they're more you know sort of neo banks fintex or it could be you know decades when they're more traditional banks like all of that infrastructure is just old and it's completely incompatible with crypto rails, right? So, they have to sort of, you know, rebuild this whole crypto um architecture on the side, but then they have to integrate it with all of their existing systems and and you know, like that is that is challenging. So that's where we're then partnering with

uh players like Zero Hash and and and others uh that sort of like offer those solutions, you know, quote unquote out of the box, right? But out of the box, right, it still takes time to implement and and things like that. So like that's one challenge. So even if they want to launch crypto products and almost all of the ones I've spoken to see the need to launch all of this, right? So the time 2 three years ago when you you know we spoke to these players and they didn't really know what crypto was they didn't really know what a stable coin was and they didn't really see the need to launch anything like those times are over right they all recognized the need to do something um but you know so that's a hurdle then to your point the regulatory one for sure too uh there's

many different approaches jurisdictions and things like that but just in short yes like that's something that uh that is ultimately extremely important to these players, right? They have to be compliant. Uh just an absolute boundary condition. Um and then, you know, I would say um the the final one is is more like a time component, right? Like once those two things are are figured out, it just always takes more time than you want to to launch these types of partnerships. Um but you know, it will happen, right?

It is going to come and we'll see uh we'll see a lot of growth. Uh so the players we're focusing on right now are more the ones who have an existing crypto business right they sort of have these rails set up um and then you know making sure of course that the regulatory picture is uh like fits well and then you know to uh to launch a product. >> Perfect. I actually wanted to go a bit into the yield product. Carlos if you don't have any follow-ups here. >> No go ahead. Um so feels like we got a decent understanding of where Maple sits um on in onchain DeFi on and DeFi. Um and also like your strategies in terms

of onboarding with FinTex, but what is I guess exactly the product that Mel offers? Um and then maybe we can dive a bit more deeply into um how it differentiates itself from some of the other products that are offered on you. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, so, so right now I' say, you know, there we have SERB USDC, right, which our flagship product, which is essentially a vault that uh people can deposit USDC into. And then, you know, they receive currently the yield is is roughly 5%. Uh, so it's it's typically about 100 150 basis points above uh lending protocols. So, one to one and a half%.

And you know, we uh we generate yield fully by this institutional uh lending strategy that that we just walked through. So we do we either put in institutional loans or you know we have a reserve that we just put in T bills right to um to sort of facilitate uh liquidity to uh to users. So that's the current product that you know pro proliferated itself all throughout DeFi that also has integrations into you know many uh wallets and uh some of the exchanges. Um the other thing we're building right now which will is is very attractive to to FinTax in particular is the ability for uh you know sort of um FinTech to dictate some other strategy right so I

think Carlos you know you highlighted that earlier where you said you know 75% of your collateral is Bitcoin that's really attractive right to these players right they really like Bitcoin they all understand Bitcoin they they're comfortable with the risks and if they see other crypto coins, you know, they they might uh be just a bit more riskaverse, right? And be like, okay, let's just only do Bitcoin back loans for now. Uh so that's something we can offer tailored to these to these fintexs, right? Where they get access to a specific uh part of the loan book in in in that sense um which you know they're comfortable with, right? And there might be other players who say, listen, I want higher yield, right? I I want only ETHback loans and soulback loans, for example, right? Which will be higher yield than

Bitcoin back loans. So uh but in short so it's a bit more modeler right we call modeler strategies uh where these partners can sort of pick and choose what they want because they all like to be in control right and that can also be with the stable coin of their choice right it doesn't even have to be USDC or USDT like if they want another stable coin if they issue their own stable coin right we can work with that >> I think that makes sense I actually Carlos uh one sec I'm going to let you have a followup but we had a chat with um Sam from Spark Carlos This was not on that one, but last week. And one thing they mentioned was uh this idea of like I guess less risky asset management slashcur curating. That kind of sounds like the BTC thing as well, right? Like

you're just giving these institutions what they want. Do you see um do you see institutions becoming more and more uh risk on going forward or do you think a large part of your work is going to continue to be in stable coin allocations and BTC allocations? >> Yes. Yeah. I think it's a great question. Um I would say in general like most of the opportunity on the lending side is also in Bitcoin bank loans, right? So it's really marrying like the two sides of the market together um in a very elegant way. uh there's most demand on the most demand on the supply side as well as on the borrow side. in terms of risk on I think it's less it's less a matter of risk on it's more a matter of

uh time and track record right so you know as time goes on these players are going to get more and more comfortable with Ethereum and Salana right like I don't necessarily think that Ethereum and Salana are much more risky um in the sense of how we're managing it right like we have different LTVs obviously for for ETH and and sold back loans to account for you know the the higher volatility in in ether soul. Um but in in principle it's very much the same structure right and you know we will underwrite it against the liquidity in the market and and all these things right so in principle in terms of risk management right like like we think it's the same level um but I do understand institutions who say listen like I just

prefer bitcoin you know even I understand your reasons let's just start with bitcoin uh so and you know that is that's very wise I think as well from these players and it it makes a lot of sense you know to um because there's typically also different opinions. You know, when we say an institution, it's not just one voice, right? Like there's some people who really want to do it. There's some people who, you know, risk of errors, there's different teams, right? So, it's also a way to sort of get them comfortable internally and then um you know, over time we'll we'll launch more strategies. So, definitely I I to answer your point directly yes.

um you know they will make more and more strategies available and I think we're seeing that with Robin Hood for example like what they've done so masterfully is making options available to retail right in a way that's super friendly right and super easy to understand um so I think in general this whole trend of financial empowerment you know giving choice to the user uh is only going to continue right as as people just get more and more educated on different financial products as so I would expect that you know these players are not just going to offer you know one very simple yield and goal of the day, right? They're going to offer different options and, you know, uh create more and more choice over time, right? Like they're not going to offer, you know, the most decent strategies, but you know, there will be

a nice middle ground. >> No, totally, totally. I totally agree with that. Um, speaking a little bit about the market, uh, right now I know that borrowing demand has been like somewhat depressed over the past few months, maybe after 1010 especially. Um, has the institutional borrowing demand improved in the past few weeks? I I was checking uh Maple's doing analytics dashboard and it seems that for the first time in months uh syrup USDC utilization is back near 100%. Uh, and it seems like onchain yields are rising a little bit. Uh, which is encouraging, but I I imagine you're in a privileged position to see like demand for

leverage. So, could you talk to us a little bit about where you see the market right now in terms of uh that borrowing demand picking back up? >> Great question. Yeah, you're right. Like, we're we're really in the middle of that, right? Like we we're very good Ps in the market. Um, so I would say it it has picked up a little bit. So, we have, you know, we have issued a couple hundred million in loans in the last few weeks. Uh, you know, which is a which is a great sign. um you know it it hasn't been like a very strong and sustained pickup yet right where sort of like our our phones are running red and you know everybody is is is is calling for loans right and we have had those environments too um so I would say you know we're we're sort of

cautiously optimistic on uh on on on the trend going forward um and you know I I do think that in general prices don't really reflect the reality of of what's happening under the hood Right. Um I think you know the there's just a lot of excitement about the AI trade and you know a lot of people got flushed out in in crypto. Um so I think you know there's sort of not many people are paying attention to what's actually happening right a lot of the tourists have left and even a lot of the you know the crypto believers are sort of like focused on AI right now.

Um, but you know, if you actually look to real product adoption under the hood and you know, some of these big uh uh partnerships that are that are going to come live over the next few months, I think there's there's a lot of things to be very optimistic about >> when you think about like this partnerships, right? Uh because this is something that I've been thinking about, but Maple has like this yield varying product, right, which is syrup USDC and syrup USDT. At the end of the day, the function of that is to have like capital sourcing so that you can then allocate that to loans. Correct. Uh when you think about like a partnership with let's say a Robin Hood like nothing is stopping you from like issuing like a white label yielding stable if that

makes sense like like let's say a hood USDC and then people on Robin Hood could allocate to that and you could get capital sourcing from that source like how flexible is Maple when it comes to like this partnerships with with neo banks does that make sense? Yes. Yeah. Great question. Um and you know to sort of to your point like if there's a fintech who says listen we have you know not USDC not USDT but our stable coin is um you know USDZ right just just as an example. Um then you know we could say okay we launch a product for that right uh we launch zero USDZ and we generate a yield on that.

Now the question is are borrowers going to want that that asset right and there's different different answers to that right so one option would be to uh you know some there might be some institutional interest right depending on on the counterparty I think if you look to the global dollar network for example there's a lot of institutional players involved right USDG um so you know I'm sure for that asset right that there could be real institutional demand um uh but there there's also other options right so it could be lend out to the the Fintex users in their own ecosystem, right? If they want to make credit available to their users, if they want to uh have their users uh you know, give their users the ability to borrow extra crypto, right? Like they could

also, you know, do that and and we could deploy into that. Um or in some cases, you know, we might convert some of those stable coins into other stable coins that we could lend out, right? But then the user could still put in USDC, right, in into that product. So I think there's um there's a lot of different ways. This is definitely one of the ways the market is going to develop, right? You just see that the large, you know, ecosystems, the really large uh players, they like to control their own stable coin, right? They they like to issue their own stable coin. We have seen many players do it, right? Deal, CLA, you know, the the Western Union, right? Like the list is very long of players who are either doing it or have done it. Many players

have spoken about it, right? even traditional banks like Bank of America, right? They've spoken about it. Um, so I think there will be many stable coins in the future, right? It's definitely not just going to be USD and as Maple like we're positioned to work with any of these stable coins that are interesting, right? Like we won't just work with anyone, right? There has to be some real traction and ecosystem behind them. Uh, but um, but that's definitely the intention, right? that we can take many of these stable coins in, we can earn a yield on them. You know, either the same strategy or other strategies also depending on the preference of the the partner.

>> Martin, I wanted to ask about um how you see you guys growing apart from FinTech. I guess my question is a bit one thing we mentioned is like a lot of this demand is going to come from this borrowing demand is going to come from Finex and then on the if we're not doing that like if people just want to use Crafty products um in the real world then you still have people who want to use onchain like for looping etc. I'm curious if like how you divide up your um personal day, week, month responsibilities in terms of like courting institutions versus trying to

figure out ways to ways to make maybe like the five to 10,000 people remaining on chain. >> Yeah. You think there's still that many? >> Maybe not. >> Um no, for sure. Just just joking. Um but yeah so the way I think about it is there sort of like four buckets you know in our head and the way that we divide up the go to market team. So one is D5, one is CFI which is you know where like the exchanges, wallets, things like that. Then one is fintech, one is stratfi.

Uh you know on defi to your point that's our bread and butter, right? That's where most of our growth has come from today. Uh that's where we're very strong. We definitely don't want to uh give up on that market, right? It's still very important. And we also think that DeFi will make a quick comeback, right? Like DeFi is not just going to die out and and and and leave, right? Like it will be a flourishing ecosystem. Um and there's just many advantages that it brings. Uh it just will be that not everybody is going to make a wallet and use DeFi apps directly, right? Um so if you want to use the hundreds of millions of of mainstream users, then just launching a D5 app and hoping people show up is probably not the right strategy, right? But you know, as as we spoke about earlier, there will be many

sophisticated players and there will be a lot of capital in there that uh that Maple will be very well positioned for to capture. The number two is more CFI. Now over time I think CFI and fintech are going to merge, right? Like right now it's still a little bit separate, but you know over time it's it's all just going to be fintech. Um but you know right now there's still a clear separation because the C5 players are just like very cryptonative. They understand crypto. They're typically more risk. They're more comfortable with these products, right? They understand them much better and many of them already offer yield products, right? So yeah, we want to continue grow market share there, you know, getting integrations, things like that. Then fintech. The reason why we're so excited about fintech in particular is because you know fintech has dro has um has uh

disrupted threatfi right so fintech uh is is uh you know this fintech business are very innovative by nature because otherwise you know like they wouldn't have like they wouldn't have had a business. So that's why I think that fintexs are going to adopt crypto much faster than threadfi. Uh so a lot of players are very focused on try to find I think again there's massive opportunities there but it's just going to take way longer than for the fintex to adopt it. So you know sort of the evolution of maple strategy has been you know um become very big in DeFi right we know one of the biggest players keep that dominant position right we don't want to forget about that then you know take CFI right and work with a lot of the CFI

players then fintech then TRFI right that's sort of like the really natural evolution for how we think how we think things are going to go and uh you know one thing I've learned as sort of in my seat over the last four years is that in growth like you should always focus on what is your next 5 to 10x, right? Like when we as Maple were at zero, it's all about getting your first 10 million in. And doing that is an extremely different process than going from 10 million to 100 million, which is very different from going to 100 million to a billion, which is very different from a billion to, you know, 4 billion where we are now, which will be very different from going to 50 billion, right? Which is our our next goal. So that's uh so you

always need to sort of evolve and be like what is that next big big bond of opportunity and you know from our perspective that next big bond of opportunity is is the fintex >> you know you've talked a lot about growth and distribution and like how fintexplain to this uh I would love to dive a bit more into the full stack onchain asset manager I know that in the previous uh token holder call I don't know if it was Joe or Sid who mentioned that you were working on an uh onchain originated securitization vehicle. Um I'm curious if you can like speak at all to those efforts and like how it diff different differentiates from the lending side of the business

>> and there should also be news on that uh at some point. Um but um you know I would say that you know Maple we have always pioneered these like institutional credit products right and it really started with loans that are you know ultimately quite simple in nature right uh issue a loan you know take collateral it's quite a simple arrangement uh and these securitization vehicle are sort of like the next evolution of that and also you know what we discussed earlier around the you know a lot of these fintex you know sort of wanting their own stable coin and their ecosystem, right? You can imagine that Maple can also be a great partner there in terms of, you know, on one side earning a yield on the stable coin,

having having a securization vehicle with such a player that then generates the yield on the stable coin, right? So, it like sort of like stays in the in the ecosystem. Um so yeah the the securization vehicle is is really an opportunity to you know work with a high quality counterparty that does a lot of uh overcolateralized loans right to their to their user base. uh those loans might be you know 10k 100k right 500k uh and for maple yeah you would be too much like underwrite every single loan right um so then we essentially lend to that vehicle and you know the counterparty then you know sort of like uh you know issues each loan right and and you know uh there certain setup in terms of like

how we manage the collateral so so so that's sort of the innovation there I think that will also be a scalable proposition right we see a lot of is these uh more retail focused lenders, right, that uh that have the need for for such a vehicle. Uh and this is also a very common structure in uh in Trafi, right? Especially in, you know, private credit and sort of like these these areas. >> Fantastic. I um I have two questions. Uh typically I'll do I think because you're in lending, I think both of these work. So I'm going to ask actually three questions. One is what is um something that you regret over the past year in terms of Maple? Um the other is what is something that you

really really are excited about over the next six to 12 months um for Maple? Although we've chatted about that quite a bit, but maybe there's like one that you really want to single out. Maybe something that you individually played a lot of role in so that everybody loves. >> Yeah. Yeah. And and regret is like a personal regret or like a a company regret that we have. >> Either worse. Um yeah, either worse. I think typically people mention that they spent too many resources on one thing instead of should have focused on another one just to like set a general thing.

>> Yeah. I think um you know like one of the things you know as I know as I'm like managing a team I think it's uh you know talent is very scarce right um and you know like I'm very blessed to have an incredible team now um so I think you know I would um I would uh you know try to to uh look at everything a little bit more through a talent lens right of like who can we recruit you know as we're sort of like in this hyper growth phase is um you know who can we bring on board that is truly exceptional has the same values the same mission right like finding these types of people are really um exceptionally important for for a

business and yeah I think we have an incredible team at Maple um but you know I think that uh yeah sort of like always looking with that lens is is something I've learned recently which uh yeah just always be on the lookout for great talent And then yeah on the company side I would say I think the research point is good. I mean yeah I you know I think realizing that fintexs are going to be the next frontier uh is is something that u you know I think I sort of realized in October last year uh you know before I kind of knew about it but that was the moment like it the light bulb like really went fully on. So yeah, you know, it's it's you always prefer to to realize the things, you know,

earlier, but yeah, sometimes like that's just how life goes and you should be grateful, you know, you realize it in time enough to, you know, now have a couple of these big partnerships lined up. >> Yeah, love that answer. Um, I guess this is a good place to close it out, but first I want to give you the opportunity to tell to people where where can they read more or learn more about Maple? Uh, anything they should be on the lookout for over the next few weeks? Yeah. So, Maple. Finance is is the website and then on Twitter, you know, Maple Finance. So, you know, we'll post all of our updates there. Uh, and definitely be on the lookout the next couple weeks for a couple of exciting announcements. And, uh, yeah, it's great to be here. You know, thanks for for inviting me. It was

a really cool conversation. And, um, you know, I think, uh, if we look back on this a year from now, then, uh, you know, we'll, uh, we'll recognize sort of the the the success and the the way that fintech and crypto is is merging. >> No. Uh, always a pleasure, Martin. Thanks so much for joining us. >> Any last words? >> No, that was I was just gonna say thank you for joining. >> Perfect. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.