In February, we partnered with Meow. Meow provides a simple, frictionless, dollar-based on-ramp for corporates seeking to earn attractive yields from Maple. By removing all the barriers to entry, we can confidently say that ‘the institutions are here’. With Meow’s crypto-yield products about to launch, this article reflects on the partnership that’s been live for 2 months, and has no signs of slowing down.

Like most effective partnerships, it began with a few conversations about protocol needs: Maple needs to drive deposits into the liquidity pools, and Meow needs to drive a high quality, diversified yield offering to their corporate clients. On top of that, both teams work at superspeed — speed and momentum are the keys to any land grab — and we were able to bring this integration to market after just a few weeks of conversations.

2 months into the partnership, both protocols have captured institutional attention and business — a recap below.

The institutions are here

A phrase first coined by Tom Dunleavy at Messari, ‘the institutions are here’ is one we’re adopting. Whilst in nascent stages, the inflows have begun to gain steam even compared to just a year ago and can be attributed to these institutions’ client demands and improved compliance and infrastructure.

Some call outs from the Messari piece include:

• Institutional investors are finally coming to drive further growth in crypto. Recent reports show 70–80% plan to make an allocation in the near term.

• Institutions that have invested in crypto outperform those that haven’t by 2.82% annually. In a yield-starved world, high potential return investments are being re-evaluated.

Institutional capital has been flooding into DeFi, attracted by higher yields than traditional finance. Whilst the flows cannot be wholly attributable to institutions, the DeFiLlama charts are self explanatory. https://defillama.com/.

Looking across the ecosystem in the last three months, it has been Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana that have received the largest institutional capital inflows, according to CoinShares data https://blog.coinshares.com/volume-72-digital-asset-fund-flows-weekly-report-a4ac4ebf0fff

The infrastructure is finally here

The quality infrastructure and on-ramps required to enable large scale investment and adoption that were missed in the last cycle are much more prevalent today. That’s where Meow and Maple come in. Meow provides the fiat to stablecoin or crypto on-ramp, while Maple provides an array of yield opportunities across a number of different lending pools.

In a short amount of time since launch, the Meow team has developed strong relationships and made significant inroads with Series A to C startups and other corporates seeking treasury management solutions. At Maple, we really value the important partnership they bring in advancing the onboarding of high quality institutions into the DeFi ecosystem.

Meow joined the Maple team offsite in February.

What’s next for the teams

Together, we will continue building our products. The Meow team will soon enable customers to purchase crypto in their app and enable crypto-deposits into Meow, with Maple pools being the recipient of some of those funds. On the Maple side, we are continuing to build out our product offering with features like automated reporting, address screening plug-ins.

By providing the infrastructure for institutions, we will continue to welcome institutions to the Maple platform and the DeFi space. The lofty goal is that we will be the reason DeFi will soon just be called finance.

To access this opportunity, connect with the Meow team via their site, reach out to Quinn Thompson or your Maple contact to learn more: www.meow.co/signup, https://maple.finance/about-us