The memo
REJECTED — published deliberately, and the most instructive rejection in this registry. ~$3.7B tracked at ~5.03% median, which screens as a modest premium over Aave. It is not a premium for the same risk; it is a different risk entirely. Maple is UNDERCOLLATERALISED institutional credit — you are lending to trading firms on their reputation, not against posted collateral. That distinction is invisible on every yield dashboard and it is the whole thing. It has already failed once, exactly as designed to: on 2022-12-05 Orthogonal Trading defaulted on $36M across eight loans, about 30% of all active loans. $31M of it sat in the M11 USDC pool, and remaining lenders in that pool took an roughly 80% LOSS. Not 8% — 80%. A further $5M in the M11 WETH pool cost lenders 17%. Orthogonal had told lenders in November it had ~$2.5M of FTX exposure; on December 3 it disclosed far more. No amount of protocol improvement changes the category: an uncollateralised lender depends on borrower honesty, and borrower honesty is not observable on-chain. A client cannot hold this and also hold the belief that their downside is bounded. Note Maple exposure now reaches clients indirectly via syrupUSDC / syrupUSDT accepted as collateral elsewhere including Aave — the rejection must extend to those wrappers, or it leaks back in through the side door.
What would reopen the file
- n/a — rejected
Facts on file
- Verdict
- Rejected
- Exposure
- stable lending
- Chains examined
- Ethereum
- Memo version
- v1
- Reviewed
- Next review