Remember the $36 million loan default hiccup linked to FTX that Maple Finance faced? Well, they’re dusting themselves off and making a grand re-entry on Solana. And boy, do they have plans!
Not one to be kept down, Maple Finance is introducing its cash management solution on Solana. This isn’t just any solution; it’s designed for the big players – DAOs and web3 companies. They offer a golden ticket to access U.S. Treasury yields via their Solana platform. Pretty neat?
But let’s rewind a bit. Why did Maple Finance leave Solana in the first place? Well, the FTX crash happened. And it wasn’t just any crash; it was a crash that led Maple Finance to suspend all its lending pools on Solana. Ouch! But here’s the juicy bit: FTX’s founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, was a big-time Solana supporter. Dig a little deeper, and you’ll find that Solana developers and companies owned by Bankman-Fried were like peas in a pod.
The aftermath of FTX’s November nosedive was brutal for Maple. They had to halt their lending pools on Solana in January. And then, the domino effect: Orthogonal Trading, a crypto arbitrage firm with funds ensnared in FTX, defaulted on eight loans on Maple. We’re talking about a cool $36 million in December. This sent shockwaves, affecting between 30% and 80% of investors in the impacted lending pools.
But it wasn’t all gloom and doom. Before this saga, Maple was on a roll, processing a staggering $125 million in loans on Solana. They had the backing of big names like Circle, Credora, and Genesis.
With their comeback, Maple is all set to revolutionize the game. They’re rolling out their cash management solution on Solana, aiming to provide on-chain treasury management solutions. The cherry on top? They’re offering simplified access to U.S. Treasury bill yields. And guess what? They’ve got the green light from the U.S. SEC to provide these yields to U.S. investors.
The DeFi world is buzzing, especially with the growing interest in private credit deals, particularly U.S. Treasury bills. The tokenized Treasuries market has ballooned from a modest $113 million at the start of the year to a whopping $641 million.
However, it’s not all rainbows and unicorns for Solana. Despite Maple’s triumphant return, Solana’s DeFi market has hit a rough patch in 2023. They’ve attracted $305 million from investors, a far cry from their dazzling $9.9 billion peak in November 2021.
