The Ones in the Arena: Maple Finance

“We want to enable true credit creation in the DeFi space and to allow for capital to be used to grow the DeFi ecosystem.” — Lucas Manuel, Smart Contracts Tech Lead, Maple Finance

If you’ve ever tried to manage a high-growth business, then you know that access to capital at the right times is crucial. And if you’re building that business in crypto, then you’re well acquainted with the challenges inherent to traditional lending, borrowing, and investing.

Maple Finance is aiming to make that process less painful, by providing a lending platform specifically aimed at crypto-native businesses that are on a growth trajectory.

As Maple gears up for their second Code4rena audit contest, we invited their Smart Contracts Tech Lead, Lucas Manuel, to chat with us about what they’re building, how he thinks about security in DeFi, and how he likes his pancakes.

What are you building, and what sets it apart from similar offerings in the space?

Maple Finance is an institutional capital marketplace powered by blockchain technology. On a mission to redefine capital markets through digital assets, Maple expands the digital economy by providing under-collateralized lending for institutional borrowers and fixed-income opportunities for lenders. The economic potential of the future will be fulfilled by harnessing global capital and applying it to areas of greatest opportunity.

What’s your vision for your project? What are you building towards in the longer view?

We want to enable true credit creation in the DeFi space and to allow for capital to be used to grow the DeFi ecosystem.

“Using comprehensive testing (unit, integration, fuzzing, symbolic execution) is the easiest way to expose issues in the protocol. That being said, it is also very important to get external audits performed so that you can get a different point of view on potential exploits.”

What’s the most innovative idea in your protocol?

We have a lot of innovative components in our protocol; one that I think is pretty interesting, though, is our flash loan-based liquidation module. In the event of a default, collateral is put into a liquidator contract and is available to be flash loaned as long as the desired asset is returned at a specified price. This allows sophisticated liquidators to make a profit if they can liquidate our collateral efficiently. This liquidation module is designed to liquidate positions of >$10 million.

It takes courage to undergo a public audit by a swarm of anonymous security researchers. It also says a lot about how much you prioritize security. What advice would you give to those on the fence?

We did Code4rena for our V1 release of the protocol and the results were outstanding. It is great to get input from so many different sources.

“I think DeFi and the Ethereum ecosystem in general is the most exciting industry in the world right now.”

Security has become an increasingly vital topic in DeFi. How do you think the ecosystem needs to evolve in order to rise to the challenge?

Testing, testing, testing. Using comprehensive testing (unit, integration, fuzzing, symbolic execution) is the easiest way to expose issues in the protocol.

That being said, it is also very important to get external audits performed so that you can get a different point of view on potential exploits.

What gets you most excited about DeFi?

Where do I start? Haha. I think DeFi and the Ethereum ecosystem in general is the most exciting industry in the world right now — such a fast pace of innovation that you do not see elsewhere.

Outside of the ideas of democratizing access to financial instruments and improving the world’s financial system as a whole, I am also excited to be working alongside such smart and innovative people. I learn something new every single day.

Complete the following sentence: “I wish more DeFi projects would…”

use dapptools! Haha

What do you geek out about, beyond DeFi?

Music! Total music nerd.

All right, then — got any music recommendations you want to share?

My Spotify playlists: here and here.

Last question: what do you like on your pancakes?

Strawberries and blueberries, with way too much pure Canadian maple syrup.

Learn more about Maple Finance:

Maple Finance’s $75K security audit contest opens December 2, 2021, and runs for 7 days. Details at code4rena.com.

The Ones in the Arena spotlights emerging and established DeFi projects and their founders, with an eye to celebrating and learning from them. The series’ name is inspired in part by Teddy Roosevelt’s famous quote, which has a central place in Code4rena’s philosophy.