What Is Maple (MPL)?

Maple Finance is an institutional capital market powered by blockchain technology. According to its whitepaper, Maple Finance's mission is to redefine capital markets through digital assets. Maple aims to boost the digital economy by providing under collateralized loans to institutional borrowers and income opportunities to lenders.

Maple provides borrowers with transparent and efficient financing that takes place on-chain. On-chain transactions are cryptocurrency transactions that take place on the blockchain, the validity of which still depends on the state of the blockchain. For lenders, Maple offers a sustainable source of income by lending to a diverse pool of crypto institutions. Pool representatives who manage these pools do their due diligence and then enter into further terms with borrowers.

The three primary features of Maple are: 

1. Scalability: Users can access funds efficiently. As borrowers build their track records and expand their businesses, loan opportunities also increase.

2. Sustainability: Sustainability leads to DeFi yields from a profitable and stable diversified pool of accredited borrowers. It also ensures that default risk is mitigated through protective capital reserves.

3. Security: The platform is audited by multiple third-party companies and secured with smart contract insurance.

MPL is the governance token of the Maple protocol. MPL tokens enable holders to participate in governance, earn fees, and stake in lending pools. MPL inherits the Maple Leaf Treasury's ERC-20 token standard for standard token behavior and the ERC-2222 token standard for USDC profit distribution.

As the Maple protocol moves towards complete decentralization, MPL holders are responsible for governance. MPL holders can vote on proposed changes to the protocol, including adjusting fees, minting or burning MPL tokens, and other protocol-level changes. Cryptocurrency burning is when a fraction of tokens are sent to a wallet with no private key. This means the tokens are lost forever. Tokens are usually burnt to reduce availability and increase market value. If MPL holders do not want to participate in governance themselves, they can delegate their voting rights. MPL holders can also vote on the use of fees already charged to the Treasury.

History of Maple Finance (MPL) 

The Maple team comprises James Baulcomb, the head of talent acquisition; Erick Dagenais, the smart contract engineer; and Joe Flanagan, the co-founder of Maple. Some other team members include Daniel Kim, the head of capital markets; Mack Macke, the sales operations representative; Quinn Thompson, the head of growth; and Jack Casey, the software engineer.