How Maple Finance Is Bridging Trad-Credit and DeFi: Lessons for Product Managers
What if the next frontier of DeFi wasn’t just flash-y yield farms, but real, unsecured institutional loans on-chain? That’s the bet Maple Finance is making – and as a product manager who’s built across AI, IoT and crypto, it’s the kind of bridge between “tech novelty” and “business leverage” I live for. In the world of decentralized finance (DeFi), much of the focus so far has been on overcollateralized lending, tokens, and liquidity mining. But behind the scenes, the opportunity that excites me far more is unlocking real credit, to real institutions, on-chain . Enter Maple Finance, a protocol that’s attempting precisely that: building a capital-markets infrastructure for institutional borrowers and lenders, layered on blockchain transparency but tailored for credit desks. For product professionals and startup founders alike, there are several lessons here about structuring marketplaces, designing for trust, and evolving business models in emerging tech. Let’s dive in. 1. What Is Mapl...