DeFi Lender Moves To Tokenize Real-world Loans On-chain

Blockworks exclusive: The new partnership ought to offer business borrowers the chance to grow their operations via new lines of credit

article-image

Source: Shutterstock

share

key takeaways

  • Traditional invoice financing helps businesses borrow money from reputable insurers against money owed by customers
  • This new partnership will allow invoices to be tokenized on the blockchain

Decentralized lending protocol Polytrade is tapping a fresh source of liquidity: DeFi loans targeting startups and midsize businesses looking for lines of credit.

Polytrade’s latest counterparty, Teller protocol, ought to permit Polytrade to tokenize real-world invoices and bring those assets on-chain. 

In traditional finance, invoice financing helps businesses borrow money from insurers via collateral owed by borrowers. Now, on Polytrade, invoices will be assigned to the platform at the loan maturation date and then tokenized. 

“By utilizing Teller protocol, Polytrade [can] unlock an entirely new liquidity pool, offering a wider array of qualified lenders the chance to provide trade finance credit,” Piyush Gupta, founder of Polytrade, said in a statement. 

Ryan Berkun, CEO of Teller, told Blockworks he wanted to build Teller because he felt that for DeFi (decentralized finance) to grow up and increase market share, “we needed to expand to some type of lending based financing or under-collateralized lending.”

Knowing that borrowers were on the hunt for access to more capital to grow operations, Berkun said he  “wanted to create an infrastructure that would make it easy for businesses to launch their own lending book.”

“That is what Teller is today — a lending marketplace that enables fintech business owners [and] developers with easy infrastructure to source capital from DeFi,” he said. 

Unlike many other DeFi lending protocols, Teller does not have an internally operated liquidity pool.

“Every borrower is different,” Berkun said. “They need different interest rates and different terms.” 

Teller, as such, has a number of design parallels to non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace OpenSea — with loans standing in for digital collectibles. 

The protocol lets borrowers to bridge off-chain data to on-chain loan transactions. Businesses and individuals requesting assets will propose a loan request on the platform, and suppliers will commit to assets and loan requests of their choice.

The last step to seal the deal is agreeing to terms.

Berkun said Teller’s new partnership with Polytrade will help solve international financing trade problems.

“Polytrade is bringing legitimate invoicing from trade financing to the on-chain world, so they can source capital for these invoices,” he said. “They’ve been doing this since 2014 in the traditional finance world and have insurance built in on all of these invoices.”


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

Industry City | Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

Brooklyn, NY

SUN - MON, JUN. 22 - 23, 2025

Blockworks and Cracked Labs are teaming up for the third installment of the Permissionless Hackathon, happening June 22–23, 2025 in Brooklyn, NY. This is a 36-hour IRL builder sprint where developers, designers, and creatives ship real projects solving real problems across […]

recent research

Featured.png

Research

Helium stands at a pivotal moment in its evolution as a decentralized wireless network, balancing rapid growth, economic restructuring, and global expansion. With accelerated growth in domestic DAUs and Hotspots supporting its network, Helium is leveraging strategic partnerships and innovative proposals to scale internationally. The recent implementation of HIP 138, “Return to HNT,” has unified its token economy under HNT, simplifying participation and strengthening liquidity, while HIP 139’s phase-out of CBRS refocuses efforts on scalable Wi-Fi offload. Meanwhile, governance shifts under HIP 141 raise questions about centralization as Nova Labs consolidates control over the roadmap.

article-image

In 2011, WikiLeaks faced a financial blockade imposed by the US government. It was Bitcoin’s first major test.

article-image

Kado’s founder Emery Andrew spoke to Blockworks about the acquisition and what’s next for the team

article-image

LayerZero’s Bryan Pellegrino chatted with Blockworks about the firm’s next steps and its 10-year runway

article-image

Colosseum co-founder Matty Taylor is seeing “high-performance [Solana] founders showing a lot of interest in private trading technology”

article-image

Executives weigh the growth potential they see in the public stock and private credit/equities arenas

article-image

Players can stake ME, trade tokens and link wallets to climb the leaderboard