Maple Finance Onboards Celsius as First CeFi Lender

Maple Finance, a decentralized institutional capital marketplace, has announced that it will onboard Celsius as the first CeFi lender on its platform.

Celsius to Lend on Maple Finance

Maple Finance, a capital-efficient corporate debt marketplace, has announced today that it will onboard Celsius as the first CeFi firm to utilize its DeFi infrastructure to lend to crypto institutions.

According to the announcement, Celsius will be setting up a $30 million wrapped Ethereum (wETH) lending pool on Maple. Big crypto institutions, including global crypto market-maker Wintermute and leading crypto service provider Amber Group, will borrow from Celsius’s wETH pool based on their balance sheet strength, profitability, and credit history.

Commenting on the partnership, Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky said:

“We are excited to use Maple’s DeFi rails to provide efficient access to capital for blue-chip crypto institutions. Maple’s lending infrastructure means we can move quickly and securely into this space. Celsius will draw on its deep experience in underwriting and look forward to welcoming new borrowers this year and beyond.”

Maple is a decentralized institutional debt marketplace that bridges the gap between traditional and decentralized finance by allowing institutions to borrow crypto from liquidity pools funded by DeFi investors and managed by experienced credit analysts. Its hybrid approach permits higher capital efficiency because it allows for undercollateralized loans—a niche product significantly underserved in DeFi.

Since it launched nine months ago, Maple has originated over $768 million in loans and currently has over $649 million in total value locked on the platform. Sidney Powell, the CEO and co-founder of Maple said that the platform currently has over 25 institutional borrowers and has consistently maintained over 80% liquidity utilization rates from the start.

Besides merely providing capital for loans, Celsius will also become a pool delegate, meaning it will actively manage the $30 million wETH pool to attract more capital and commit loans. Commenting on this, Powell highlighted that the ETH-denominated pool would be the first of its kind on the platform. “The core digital asset available for loans so far has been USDC, so we’re really proud to enable wETH borrowing with Celsius, who will provide the capital from their Treasury,” he told Crypto Briefing. 

This isn’t the first time Celsius has dabbled in DeFi to generate more yield for itself and its depositors. Last December, the CeFi lender lost around $51 million in a $120 million hack of BadgerDAO, a DeFi platform offering yield opportunities on wrapped Bitcoin.

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this feature owned ETH and several other cryptocurrencies.