Maple Launches First Perpetual Trading Use Case for syrupUSDC on Drift Protocol

Maple Finance — the largest on-chain asset manager by AUM — has rolled out syrupUSDC as collateral for perpetual futures trading on Drift Protocol, marking its first use case in leveraged trading.

Quick facts:

syrupUSDC can now be used as yield-bearing collateral on Drift, earning 7–8% APY.
$100,000 in incentives and a $50 million supply cap aim to drive adoption.
Integration boosts capital efficiency and strengthens Solana DeFi infrastructure.

According to an Aug. 13 press release shared with crypto.news, traders on Drift — a Solana-based decentralized perpetuals exchange — can now earn yield on their margin collateral while actively trading, collecting between 7% and 8% APY without moving assets out of position.

Capital efficiency breakthrough for DeFi margin trading
Drift, the second-largest perpetuals DEX on Solana with $1.21 billion in total value locked, has added syrupUSDC to its cross-collateral system. The move addresses a long-standing challenge in DeFi margin trading: collateral typically sits idle, generating no return. With syrupUSDC, traders can now offset funding costs or build passive income streams while maintaining open positions.

To encourage adoption, Maple has seeded $100,000 in incentives and imposed a $50 million initial supply cap for syrupUSDC on Drift. This follows Maple’s June expansion of syrupUSDC to Solana via platforms such as Kamino and Orca, initially launching with $30 million in liquidity. That rollout, powered by Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol, saw $60 million minted on Solana in just two weeks.

Growing Maple’s DeFi footprint
Maple CEO Sid Powell said the integration “creates otherwise unavailable possibilities for traders to do more with their capital,” enabling simultaneous trading, earning, and compounding returns.

Drift’s cross-margin setup allows syrupUSDC to be paired with other collateral types — a feature uncommon among DEXs that often restrict collateral to USD or USDC.

SyrupUSDC has quickly become DeFi’s fastest-growing yield-bearing stablecoin, with $1.9 billion in assets under management. Its yield comes from Maple’s institutional lending pools, which delivered 5.2% APY on Bitcoin products and 9.2% on high-yield offerings in Q2 2025.

Maple’s total on-chain AUM now stands at $3.24 billion, surpassing BlackRock in the category, with an updated year-end goal of $5 billion. The Drift integration is expected to solidify Maple’s role in Solana’s expanding DeFi ecosystem and set a precedent for using yield-bearing stablecoins in leveraged trading.