syrupUSDT — Retail Risk Report
Moderate risk · 6.0/10 · Sibling product to syrupUSDC
Live pool backing, peg deviation, and exit-liquidity tiers are on the dashboard.
| Yield | Exit method | Primary redemption | Pool size | Chains |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ~4.5–5% live (organic loan interest) | DEX aggregator (sub-minute) or queue | Permissionless (no KYC) | ~$436M (smaller than syrupUSDC’s ~$1.22B) | Ethereum primary |
Summary
syrupUSDT is the USDT-denominated sibling of syrupUSDC in Maple Finance’s “Syrup” institutional credit product line. Same Maple architecture, same Pool Delegate firm, same Maple Labs entity — but materially smaller pool (~$436M vs syrupUSDC’s $1.22B). Yield is real (interest paid by real institutional borrowers), zero principal losses since launch, and the product runs on the same audited v2 contract codebase as its USDC sibling.
Pool composition (verified 2026-05-04 against Maple’s own AUM Details page): $379M Loans (87% — third-party institutional credit, 84% BTC + 16% XRP at 125–150% init level) + $43M Liquidity (10% — pool-owned PYUSD/USDC-AMM/USDT-AMM positions). The Liquidity layer is at-par with the underlying asset and routes through Maple’s lending infrastructure as accounting wrapper, but is functionally pool-owned strategy custody, NOT third-party credit. “Overcollateralized at all times” applies to the loan book; the Liquidity layer is intentionally at par.
The catch: syrupUSDT is more concentrated than syrupUSDC at the per-pool level, AND it shares borrowers with syrupUSDC. The largest single loan in syrupUSDT is $175M / ~41% of the pool — vs the largest loan in syrupUSDC at $200M / 16% of that pool. A single borrower default in syrupUSDT writes down ~40% of the principal in one event. And because the same borrowers borrow from BOTH pools, holding both syrupUSDC and syrupUSDT together does NOT diversify your credit exposure to those entities — it concentrates them.
What you actually earn
~4.5–5% APY (verified live from Maple’s GraphQL syrupGlobals.apyTimeSeries). Same yield mechanics as syrupUSDC: borrower interest, net of Maple’s protocol fee + 3.33% delegate fee.
At ~4.5–5%, syrupUSDT sits above the comparable USD-yield set: 3-month T-bills are around 3.7–4.0% (US Treasury fiscal data, March 2026 average 3.70%), tokenized T-bill products (BUIDL, USTB, USYC, Ondo USDY) net ~3.5–4.0% after management fees, and onchain stablecoin lending on Aave V3 / Morpho is in the 3.5–4.5% range (currently elevated from the mid-April rsETH/Kelp DAO incident, and still under 5%). That’s a ~50–100 bp spread above T-bills — appropriate compensation for institutional credit risk rather than a yield-chase number.
Cross-pool concentration: one product, two denominations
Maple presents syrupUSDC and syrupUSDT as a single Syrup credit line offered in two stable denominations — not two independent credit baskets. A Syrup loan is offered to one institutional borrower across the family rather than partitioned per pool, so the borrower set is shared by design. Choosing syrupUSDT vs syrupUSDC is a choice of denomination, not an independent credit pick.
That makes the right sizing unit the family loan book, not the per-pool number. Syrup runs a small borrower set (4 in syrupUSDT, 13 in syrupUSDC, mostly overlapping), so expect single-counterparty concentration above the ~10%-per-counterparty limit common in institutional credit frameworks. That’s the structural product feature, not a temporary state — borrower turnover happens but the small-set + overlap pattern persists.
Illustration (snapshot 2026-05-04, recomputed Loans-only basis; live numbers shift as the loan book turns over):
| Family borrower | syrupUSDT | syrupUSDC | Combined | % of family loan book ($1.27B) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
0x8669f3...f1e9 (XRP + BTC) | $62.1M | $181.9M | $244.0M | 19.3% |
0x09b8...6B8a (BTC) | — | $200M | $200M | 15.8% |
0xb62446...d505 (BTC) | $62.0M | $67.6M | $129.6M | 10.2% |
Top-3 family borrowers ~49% of the family loan book; single-largest ~19% — both above the 10%-per-counterparty institutional credit framework limit. The Liquidity layer (PYUSD/AMM custody) is also shared across the family — a Maple-firm-level custody event affects both pools.
Sizing implication: treat a combined syrupUSDC + syrupUSDT position as one Syrup-family allocation against one shared borrower set, and apply per-counterparty exposure limits at the family level rather than per-pool. Independent per-pool sizing systematically under-weights the real per-borrower concentration. Live family concentration: see the per-pool dashboards linked below for current borrower breakdown.
How exit works
Two paths, same mechanics as syrupUSDC, but smaller pool depth:
1. DEX aggregator (preferred for retail). Use KyberSwap, 1inch, or any DEX aggregator. Smaller pool means materially shallower DEX depth than syrupUSDC’s empirical ~12 bps to $100K — expect higher slippage at any given notional size.
2. Direct redemption. Submit to the WithdrawalManager; processed at NAV from free pool USDT. Same cycle-based queue as syrupUSDC.
For sizing above the low retail range (~$50K+), you’ll likely use the queue. Stress-case redemption depth is bound by loan-repayment cadence on the smaller $422M principal base — expect queue latency of weeks rather than days for institutional sizes during correlated outflow stress.
What the contracts are doing
Same architecture as syrupUSDC. ERC-4626 vault. Borrowers post collateral that’s held off-chain by custodians under Pool Delegate policy. The smart contract handles loan accounting, payment scheduling, and time-based default triggering — but the credit-relevant decisions (who to lend to, on what terms, when to call) are human-discretionary at the Pool Delegate level.
The Pool Delegate is a single externally-owned address (0x93aA06F8...501A, single key) — different EOA from syrupUSDC’s (0xC1e1...49f), but the same firm runs both. Maple’s first-loss cover requirement for the pool is currently $0; depositors absorb credit losses directly.
Audits & security
Same audit profile as syrupUSDC: 8+ audits, Spearbit + Trail of Bits on the v2/Syrup contracts, $1M+ Immunefi bounty, ERC-4626 standard architecture. Both pools run on the same audited contract codebase.
Score breakdown
| Dimension | Score | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Peg mechanism | 7.0 | NAV-accruing, organic yield, no losses to date |
| Backing | 6.5 | Two-bucket: 87% Loans (BTC/XRP overcollateralized at 125–150%) + 10% Liquidity (pool-owned PYUSD/USDC-AMM/USDT-AMM). Per-pool concentration significantly higher than syrupUSDC (largest single loan ~41% of pool vs 16%). |
| Liquidity | 6.0 | $436M Ethereum pool. Smaller depth than syrupUSDC; expect higher aggregator slippage and longer queue cadence at institutional sizing. Permissionless mint/redeem at the vault layer is the same as syrupUSDC — no KYC gating. The smaller pool caps the score below syrupUSDC’s 7.5 but the access pattern is still a meaningful advantage over KYC-gated peers. |
| Issuer | 5.5 | Same Maple Labs Cayman entity as syrupUSDC, same audit profile, ~3-year clean record across the Syrup product line. |
| Overall | 6.0 | Slightly worse than syrupUSDC’s 6.75 — primarily due to higher per-pool concentration and shallower exit liquidity |
Who it’s for
Allocators who already hold or are sizing into syrupUSDC and want USDT-denominated exposure to the same Maple credit framework. Comfortable for retail and low-institutional positions willing to accept higher per-pool concentration than syrupUSDC. Not a yield-chase product — competing with USD-benchmark T-bills on yield while accepting credit + custody + governance risks.
Who should avoid
- Anyone holding syrupUSDC and looking for a “diversification” sister product — the cross-pool borrower overlap means it concentrates rather than diversifies for the family’s biggest borrowers
- Position sizes above the low-MM range without explicit queue tolerance — the smaller pool is queue-bound earlier than syrupUSDC at proportional sizes
- Anyone needing the largest single-borrower exposure to stay below 20% of pool — syrupUSDT’s largest loan is 41% of pool
What to watch
- Per-pool concentration. Largest single loan is 41% of pool. Watch the live dashboard for changes.
- Cross-pool concentration if you also hold syrupUSDC. Top-3 cross-pool borrowers carry ~48.8% of the family loan book; single-largest carries ~19.3%. Liquidity layer custody is also shared between pools. Compute combined per-borrower exposure rather than treating the pools as independent.
- Pool Delegate roster changes. Same Pool Delegate firm runs both pools but with different operational EOAs.
Live dashboard
A live monitoring view is available at tidresearch.com/dashboards/?asset=syrupusdt — refreshed hourly from on-chain reads. Separate Loan Book and Liquidity Layer panels show third-party credit health vs pool-owned strategy custody, with the shared custody addresses surfaced. The Cross-Pool Family panel (also rendered on the syrupUSDC page) surfaces cross-pool concentration metrics live on a Loans-only basis. Sister page: syrupUSDC dashboard.
A note on Maple’s history
Maple v1 (2021–2022) lent on an undercollateralized basis and lost LPs ~$50M+ during the 2022 credit cycle. The Syrup product line is Maple’s structural response — overcollateralized loans on the third-party credit book, vetted Pool Delegates, active margin calls. Same legal entity (Maple Labs, Cayman Islands), same broader team. The v2 Syrup product has run cleanly for ~3 years through May 2026. This report treats it as background context rather than a leading risk factor. See syrupUSDC retail report for the same context (applies equally to both pools).
For institutional-grade risk analysis — Pool Delegate identities, contract addresses, custody EOA inventory, on-chain monitoring patterns — the institutional version is available.