Looking back on H1 2022

PLATFORM PERFORMANCE:

At the turn of the year, $542 million loans had been originated across 4 pools, and in 6 months originations have grown to over $1.5 billion. Much of this growth is attributable to the launch of 4 new pools, two on Ethereum and two on Maple Solana. Maple Solana now accounts for $115 million in loan originations and Maple Ethereum for $1.4 billion. Existing pools have grown in size and provided value to Lenders, Borrowers and Pool Delegates too.

Looking inward, Maple had its first cash-flow positive quarter in Q1 2022, MPL listed on several leading exchanges including Coinbase, Gemini and Huobi. We spoke at AVAX and Permissionless, joined the Token Terminal, Solana, and Real Vision podcasts and were featured in Blockworks, Business Insider and The Block.

We began the year with 20 team members, and have grown to 35. Key department leads have been hired to continue enhancing Maple's product delivery and operational excellence.

PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT:

In January, we shipped Loans V2, meaning that our smart contracts now provide flexibility and cost savings for protocol participants. In April, Maple moved multi-chain with the launch of Maple Solana and the product continues to be built out to parity with Maple Ethereum.

May saw the launch of xMPL, providing MPL token holders the opportunity to share in Maple's growth, and within a week 30% of circulating MPL had been staked.

In June, we launched loan refinancing so Borrowers can roll or update existing loans. The feature provides an enhanced experience and greater capital efficiency for Borrowers while giving Pool Delegates more flexibility to manage their pools.

With safety as our number 1 priority, we have continued to operate smoothly without any exploits or major bugs, and recently received a PQR score of 91% from DeFi Safety. The team uphold industry leading security standards and workflows, and have conducted 2 audits on the Maple Solana code, as well as the new xMPL contract and have a rolling Bug Bounty program with Immunefi.

Looking ahead to H2 2022

The long-term goal is to establish Maple as the dominant institutional crypto-capital network by building robust, intuitive and composable lending infrastructure. Just one year after launching the protocol, Maple has found product-market fit by providing the tooling for lending businesses to be run on-chain. We want to continue improving the user experience by adding further flexibility and product features, as well as continuing to build out the platform so that Maple becomes a full-service capital market infrastructure. Below are the core focus areas for the next 6 months.

1. Platform focus

In order to scale, Maple is focused on expanding its user base and use cases. Over the next 6 months we will target new Borrower verticals and bring new institutional Lenders to the platform.

NEW MARKETS

In Q3, we will expand our user base and plan to launch a pool catering to financing the crypto mining industry. Separately, we are in talks with a number of potential Pool Delegates and progress conversations to open pools catering to FinTech, SaaS and other verticals in and outside of crypto.

NEW INTEGRATIONS

The team continues to working on integrations with 3rd-party applications to make the Maple protocol more widely accessible and useful. These include exchange, custodian and yield aggregator integrations. Another key focus is enabling fiat deposits into Maple pools allowing institutions that don’t interact with crypto to participate on Maple’s platform as Lenders or Borrowers.

2. Product focus

Over the next 6 months, Maple will improve reporting features, build out, and build and launch Maple 2.0. Maple 2.0 is a fundamental overhaul of the current smart contract infrastructure that will correct current flaws and enable scalability of the platform. The first version of the protocol enabled Maple to grow from from zero to $1.5 billion, Maple 2.0 will allow scaling into the 10s of billions and beyond.

MAPLE 2.0:

Maple 2.0 is modular and flexible, many new features will meet the needs of a wide range of institutional players.

Iterative Development. Maple 2.0 reconfigures the architecture of our smart contracts, to enable the iterative development of new features, loan structures and strategies. Maple provides lending infrastructure and this new smart contract architecture provides a flexible and strong base to iterate from.

Flexibility. Pool Delegates will have greater flexibility in controlling and operating their pools, allowing for a broader range of pool strategies and Borrower sets. An example includes an overhaul of the withdrawal mechanism to enable shorter term liquidity options for Lenders.

Pool Cover. A re-design of Pool Cover will be built and implemented as part of Maple 2.0. Soon Cover will be deposited as a single asset, removing the requirement on Balancer and solving for impermanent loss.

Interoperability. Both Lenders and Cover Providers will be able to take pool tokens, representing their share of ownership in a pool and use them elsewhere. Secondary markets for these tokens are expected to develop and expand post launch.

Compounding interest. With the introduction of Maple 2.0, interest earned by Lenders will compound automatically. Lenders will not have to claim payments and reinvest to enjoy compounding returns.

IMPROVED REPORTING

The team will also focus on implementing improved reporting, accounting and compliance tools similar to that of industry-leading financial services firms. With these foundational blocks in place, Maple will become a true one-stop-shop for institutions to join the platform and expand their participation.

BUILDING OUT MAPLE SOLANA

Having grown from 0 to $115 million in just 2 months, Maple Solana is off to a fast start. We are presently exploring new opportunities within the Solana ecosystem, such as pools catering to financing Solana infrastructure initiatives; node operators, SaaS companies and startups.

To keep the momentum and continue to scale Maple Solana, several key product initiatives will be built and released in H2, with the goal to build a differentiated product with its own users and use cases.

New and unique features. Additional and unique functionality will be built and launched in H2. One introduction will be open-term loans; loans without a predefined end-date that can be called by the Borrower or Pool Delegate when required. The team is also exploring active collateral management features; meaning that new collateral can be posted or withdrawn while the loan is active.

SYRUP token. Maple Solana will soon have its own token. In H2 the team will work to create and mint SYRUP. Launching SYRUP as a second token on Solana is considered the most secure and non-dilutive method for initial launch and the lowest risk way to manage fees, security, Pool Cover, and liquidity mining, read more on that here.

Excited to scale

Maple is looking forward to the next 6 months and the team is energized and focused on building and scaling. Maple 2.0 will be a significant milestone that enables our scaling over the next five years. The combination of initiatives and technology provides the right ingredients for Maple to continue growing through any market conditions.

If you have any questions about Maple 2.0 functionality or other roadmap objectives feel free to reach out to us on Discord or Telegram.