Open-Term loans can now be issued on Maple. The new loan structure expands the flexibility of the Maple platform, and empowers Delegates to control pool liquidity, service withdrawal requests and mitigate risks for Lenders.

Open-Term loans refer to loans that are issued without an explicit maturity date, and which can be ‘called’ by Delegates or repaid by Borrowers at anytime. Over $2 billion Fixed-Term loans have been issued using Maple’s smart contracts and building flexible Open-Term loans on top of our robust lending infrastructure has been the most requested feature.

A Delegate may choose to call a loan to meet the liquidity needs of Lenders. Before the introduction of Open-Term loans, Lenders would have to wait for fixed date interest and principal loan payments to be made for cash to become available to withdraw. Lenders need more certainty on when they can access their capital. Now, a loan can be called at anytime and cash will enter the pool so customers can withdraw their requested funds.

Delegates may also choose to call a loan based on risk-factors in relation to Pool concentration, a Borrower's financial health or volatile market conditions. Upon calling a loan, a Borrower must repay the full amount of the loan within a set time frame, which instantly improves the health of the loan book. Delegates and Lenders will be able to track the repayment status of a called loan in real-time on app.maple.finance.

Borrowers also benefit from this build and will now choose to take an Open-Term loan over a Fixed-Term loan for the flexibility to close a loan early without incurring prepayment penalties which increases the cost of borrowing from pools on Maple.

Releasing Open-Term loans is part of our product strategy to provide a full-suite of lending products which enable a diverse and attractive range of yield opportunities for Lenders. By empowering Delegates with open-term and short-term; collateralized and uncollateralized; fixed and variable loan structures, Lenders will be able to choose opportunities which suit their liquidity, risk and return requirements.

Tools like Open-Term loans complement the existing Fixed-Term loans product and are a key component of an Active Collateral feature set to launch in the next few months. The Active Collateral feature will require the value of collateral to stay above a specific threshold, and reduce loss of capital in the event of a default. An over-collateralized Open-Term loan with cross-chain collateral will be the most advanced lending product offered by a DeFi platform and will soon be available on Maple.