Is the DeFi Mullet Strategy the Best Way to Bring Finance Onchain?

Unchained

Laura Shin

News, Tech News, Business News

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 12 March 2026

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sid Powell and Paul Frambot on why Apollo, Cantor, and Coinbase are quietly building their financial products on DeFi rails, and what it means for lending. Nexo is the premier digital wealth platform. Receive interest on your crypto, borrow against it without selling, and trade a range of assets. Now available in the U.S with 30 days of exclusive privileges. Get started at nexo.com/unchained Onchain lending used to be a crypto-native curiosity. Now Cantor Fitzgerald is extending credit facilities through it, Apollo Global Management is acquiring governance tokens, and Coinbase users are borrowing against Bitcoin to buy houses, all running on DeFi protocols operating in the background. Maple Finance CEO Sid Powell and Morpho co-founder Paul Frambot sit at the center of this shift, and they have very different reads on what it takes to make institutional adoption real. What are the actual limits to onchain lending growth right now? Does the DeFi mullet model work for everyone, or only for specific use cases? And as DAOs across the industry stumble under the weight of public governance, what structures actually let a protocol move fast without losing trust? This conversation gets into the mechanics, the trade-offs, and the deals that are quietly redrawing the lines between DeFi and traditional finance. Guests: ⁠Paul Frambot, Co-Founder & CEO at Morpho Labs ⁠Sid Powell, CEO & Co-Founder of Maple Finance Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Unchained, your no hype resource for all things Crypto.
0:03.0	I'm your host, Laura Shin.
0:05.0	Thanks for joining this live stream.
0:06.0	Before we get started, a quick reminder, nothing you hear on Unchained is investment advice.
0:11.0	This show is for informational and entertainment purposes only, and my guest and I may hold assets discussed in the show.
0:17.0	For more disclosures, visit Unchained Crypto.com.
0:20.0	Introducing Nexo, the premier digital wealth platform.
0:23.8	Receive interest on your digital assets.
0:26.6	Barrow against them without selling.
0:28.4	Trade a variety of cryptocurrencies.
0:30.8	All in one platform.
0:32.2	Now available in the U.S.
0:34.8	Get started today at nexo.com slash unchained.
0:40.5	Today's live stream features two guests in the on-chain lending world. In the second half,
0:45.6	we'll hear from Paul Frambeau of Morpho, but first up, we have an interview with Sid Powell,
0:50.8	CEO and co-founder of Maple Finance. Welcome, Sid.
0:57.0	Hey, Laura. Thanks for having me on. Glad to be here. Yeah, excited to chat with you.
1:00.0	So there's a number of defy lending protocols.
1:03.0	Maple Finance is one of them. So just tell us what niche it occupies in this world.
1:08.0	Yeah, in the defy lending space, Maple, Maple kind of crosses two interesting,
1:14.6	two interesting unique, unique segments.
1:18.8	So we do primarily institutional lending.
	...

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