Case study — Maple Finance
Repositioning a DeFi lender as the Onchain Asset Manager.
By late 2024, Maple Finance was closing in on $1B AUM with institutional allocations from Bitwise and Cantor Fitzgerald. The business had grown up. The brand hadn't. Maple was still being categorized as a DeFi lender, caught between Aave on one side and BlackRock on the other. We repositioned Maple as the Onchain Asset Manager and broadened its focus to mainstream outlets. Sid Powell went from being one of several “DeFi guys” to one of the more credible crypto voices in financial media.
How it started
A DeFi lender, talking to DeFi people.
How it's going
The Onchain Asset Manager, on CNBC and CoinDesk.
+8x
TVL, year over year. Maple's own north-star metric, the DeFi equivalent of AUM.
+200%
Media mentions, year over year.
TVL is a proxy for inbound interest here, not a stand-in for ARR. Maple's business model runs on TVL the way SonarX's runs on ARR; the two aren't a direct comp, but the pattern, an awareness push turning into measurable inbound, is the same one.
How did we do?
Category Repositioning
Moved Maple out of the crowded “DeFi lender” bucket, caught between Aave and BlackRock, and into a category of one: the Onchain Asset Manager.
Tier-One Media Visibility
Took Sid Powell from crypto-native podcasts to CNBC Squawk Box and CoinDesk, in front of the institutional audience Maple was actually trying to reach.
Credible Voice, Not Just Another DeFi Guy
Gave Sid a consistent point of view on where onchain credit is headed, so interviews built on each other instead of repeating the same pitch.
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