Summary
Ketju does not approve Maple: one firm, Maple Direct, decides which borrowers receive loans and runs every step after that, and holders cannot see the loan book. Maple has changed since its 2022 losses. Its docs say every loan behind syrupUSDC, syrupUSDT and syrupUSDG is overcollateralized with liquid digital assets, and third parties report ratios above 150% (OAK Research). That fixed the underwriting. It also put all the risk in the operator, and nothing about the operator can be verified from outside. Collateral sits with off-chain custodians. Margining runs on Maple's private price feeds, and liquidation is a manual process through OTC desks. The High Yield product redeploys collateral into staking and secured lending. Withdrawals queue behind a stated 30-day ceiling. Maple's claim of no defaults since 2023, across $20B+ of originations, rests on its own figures, with no independent audit of the loan tape. In 2022 Orthogonal Trading defaulted on $36M, and lenders in the M11 USDC pool lost about 80%, per reporting at the time. Ketju also does not approve syrupUSDC or syrupUSDT where other protocols accept them as collateral, so the exposure cannot return by another route.
Review triggers
- Maple publishes the Governor multisig's signers and threshold, and every privileged action runs through the timelock
- Collateral custody and margining become verifiable: positions on-chain, or independent attestations of custodian balances and margin events
- Rehypothecation of borrower collateral ends, or is fenced off entirely outside the products under consideration
- Maple publishes a full independently audited default, impairment, and loss record covering 2023 onward
Facts
- Verdict
- Not approved
- Type
- Dollar lending
- Chains examined
- Ethereum
- Reviewed
- Last confirmed