📝 Editor’s Note:

Welcome to part 2 of OurNetwork’s series covering lending protocols, a sector which as a whole crossed over $75B in total value locked for the first time, according to DefiLlama. 

In this issue we have Eloviano covering Kamino, Seby covering Maple, Biff covering SuiLend, rezarwz covering Yei Finance, Muggles covering Gearbox, and Mary covering Loopscale.

In total the six projects account for nearly $6B in TVL, according to DefiLlama.

Let's get into it.

– ON Editorial Team

Kamino | Maple | SuiLend | Yei Finance | Gearbox | Loopscale

• Kamino has steadily become a DeFi powerhouse, with 390,000 users since its launch. But the real story isn’t just the numbers; it’s how user behavior has shifted across Kamino’s seasons. Season 1 was a rush, with the protocol seeing its highest daily and monthly activity, and a surge of new users. More than twice as many users participated in Season 1 than in later seasons, though its average supply and loan sizes per user were modest.

• Season 3 looked quite different: new user numbers dropped, but the average supply per user soared to more than 20 times Season 1’s average. Kamino Lend’s user base became smaller but more concentrated, with larger, more committed players now dominating the protocol.

• Interestingly, the earliest users, those who joined before Season 1, proved to be some of the most loyal. Even as overall numbers dipped, these users stuck around and continued to engage with the protocol at higher rates than later cohorts.

• Maple entered scale-up mode in Q2 with explosive AUM growth from $792M to $3.2B while ARR climbed to $15M – all while originating $1.12B of institutional loans. This growth positioned Maple as the largest onchain asset manager, surpassing BlackRock's BUIDL fund–with signs of continued market share capture. Such success led the Maple team to increase H2 guidance across the board: $30M ARR and $5B AUM are the current year-end targets with new DeFi assets in development.

• syrupUSD ranks third among yield-bearing dollar assets with $1.87B AUM and instant liquidity across Ethereum and Solana. Major integrations enabled $800M+ deposits from: Binance Web3 Wallet, Morpho, which is generating 24% APY, Pendle which is averaging 12% – post-Drips, and $400M+ inflows from Spark.

• syrupUSD maintained consistent 7-8% APY throughout Q2, not including the added yield of Maple’s Drips incentives. With base APY, Drips, and structured products combined, syrupUSD returned 16.2% APY to holders over the last year.

• The SuiLend ecosystem saw exceptional year-over-year growth, with core protocol SuiLend's total value locked surging +1,303% to $814M. Ecosystem protocols STEAMM and SpringSui followed with +360% and +92% growth respectively, reaching $230M and $10M. SuiLend is responsible for just over 26% of Sui's total TVL, and is the leading DeFi protocol on Sui by TVL. In terms of TVL by token, SUI accounts for 60%, stablecoins account for just over 10%, and BTC on Sui accounts for over 17%.

• Suilend's decentralized exchange (DEX) volume soared from $8.9k to a $40.3M peak, a 454,665% increase, despite great competition from up and coming DEXs like Momentum and Bluefin. This growth underscores Suilend’s rising influence in the Sui ecosystem and its ability to capture meaningful trading volume.

• SuiLend's fees and revenue have more than doubled year-over-year in 2025 with $6.87M collected in revenue, up 112%, and $15M collected in fees, up 145%. Ecosystem participants SpringSui and STEAMM combined make up to 30% of daily fees, serving as major revenue engines and large contributors to year-over-year revenue growth.

• Yei Finance, a leading lending protocol on Sei, saw remarkable liquidity growth since its launch. In 15 months, Yei attracted $271M in net inflows, lifting TVL from $38M to $267M. Roughly 84% of that expansion comes from fresh deposits, not price drift. A record $107M inflow in Mar 2025 (post-incentives) lit the fuse for a three-month surge to the $366 M peak. July’s $129M outflow cut TVL by only 29%, leaving $260M and signalling robust user retention and long-term confidence in the protocol.

• Q2 2025 revenue hit $0.89 M, up 9% quarter-over-quarter while TVL jumped by a multiple of 2.3. Monetisation improved as rev/fees climbed from 33% in February to 45% in June, lifting the annual run rate to roughly $3.2M. Yield thinned with scale, yet richer margins show policy tweaks are converting user activity into durable income.

• Net interest margin, the revenue earned per $1 lent, fell from 0.13% in January to a 0.04% low in April while total borrow value increased 49%. Efficiency rebounded to 0.08% by July amid a 35% pull-back, yet August’s slide to 0.01% signals renewed pressure on pricing power.

• Gearbox TVL increased by a 2.29x with Permissionless Beta having added over $200M in 2025. The platform's infrastructure is now becoming available to institutions, curators and projects to set up lending markets. Permissionless remains in Beta testing mode but has seen over 20 markets being deployed across 5 different networks. These markets have added over $240M in TVL, unlocking faster speed to market and larger scale for Gearbox.

• Lido instance on Gearbox Permissionless features a wstETH lending pool, now over $130M in TVL, and leverage minting of rstETH, $110M in TVL. At over $225M in TVL, it is now the largest curated pool for ETH assets in DeFi.

• Gearbox Permissionless features an Omni-EVM architecture enabling deployment across Ethereum Virtual Machines permissionlessly. The move has enabled Gearbox to scale from 3 networks in 2024 to 28 in 2025, bringing lending infrastructure to EVMs from Day 1.

• Loopscale is a modular, order book–based lending protocol powering programmable credit markets on Solana. In the past two weeks, Loopscale has attracted over $3.3M in zBTC inflows and $1M in borrows, leading all lending protocols and cementing its position as the top credit venue for BTC DeFi on Solana.

• $2M in liquidity provider (LP) tokens from Adrena, a perpetual futures platform, were deposited into Loopscale before any incentives went live, rivaling activity in already-incentivized markets. This early traction signals strong organic demand and product-market fit for Loopscale's LP collateral Loops.

• Loopscale lenders earned a 30-day average APY of 8.9% on SOL, significantly outperforming the 5.7% average across other protocols. The protocol’s order book architecture leads to more efficient rate discovery and sustainably higher yields for lenders.