Maple, an on-chain asset management, is bringing syrupUSDC to Coinbase’s Base network. This will enable institutional credit rails. Next, Maple will work on Aave’s Base instance.
Maple, an on-chain asset management, is adding its yield-bearing US dollar token, syrupUSDC, to Coinbase’s Base network. This connects institutional credit directly to a rapidly growing Ethereum layer-2 ecosystem.
A Thursday press release said that the launch will give the company a “direct path” to Coinbase’s larger ecosystem of users and products. It will also make institutional-grade yield available to more onchain users, instead of keeping it on the Ethereum mainnet.
Governance and cross-protocol expansion
If the vote passes, there is also an Aave governance proposal to include syrupUSDC as collateral on the Aave V3 Base Instance.
Maple claimed that Chainlink infrastructure will be used to make it possible for Ethereum and Base to work together, which will let syrupUSDC be used as collateral in a variety of decentralised finance (DeFi) schemes, including as lending and leverage.
The products were structured on “overcollateralized loans” with collateral values that could be “tracked in real time.” This gives syrupUSDC excellent downside protection and sustainable payouts as it grows into a new ecosystem like Base.
Why Base matters for Maple’s strategy
Powell called Base a “key next step” for Maple because it has a lot of distribution power and DeFi is growing quickly. He also noted that syrupUSDC “thrives in these conditions” as a composable yield instrument, and that the Aave listing will “boost its growth even more.”
He thinks that the next phase of DeFi will be driven by producing products that can be scaled up and are stable, and that both institutions and regular people can trust them. He wants syrupUSDC to be one of the main building blocks on Base, and he said that “further integrations” in the Base ecosystem were “in the works.”
Risk controls and institutional safeguards
Maple has a lot of rules around “looping,” which is when users borrow against syrupUSDC and then put it back in to get greater leverage. It also has a lot of rules about leverage in general.
Maple asserted that the loan books that support syrupUSDC are overcollateralized, that the values of the collateral are checked in real time, and that borrowers have clear margin call and liquidation limits. The loan-to-value constraints on Aave also limit how much users may borrow against the token.
Powell also used the term “institutional-grade” to describe Maple’s stack, saying that it included technological, operational, and legal infrastructure developed for institutional lenders.
Strengthening Base’s DeFi stack
The connection adds another piece of credit infrastructure to Coinbase and Base’s DeFi stack, which is growing beyond only trading and speculation.
Teams building on Base now have an additional yield leg to combine with others thanks to SyrupUSDC. This is important since the chain is trying to find a balance between its rapid expansion in consumer and Social-Fi experiments and a more stable DeFi stack.
Jesse Pollak, the developer of Base, claimed that to build an open, global onchain economy, they needed the “best possible collateral and financial primitives.” He also said that Maple provided “institutional-grade infrastructure” that made Base’s DeFi stack much stronger.