Yield-bearing margin arrives on Drift

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Lightspeed has exclusively learned that Maple — one of Solana’s largest onchain asset managers — is bringing its yield-bearing syrupUSDC stablecoin into perpetual futures markets operated by Drift, Solana’s flagship perps DEX.

Drift, known for its deep onchain liquidity and capital-efficient margins, will accept syrupUSDC as margin collateral, allowing traders to earn a 7-8% APY on their margin while trading.

This will be the first time the exchange has allowed a collateral asset to serve dual purposes, earning yield while backing positions — sweetened by $100,000 in incentives and an initial $50 million cap.

One of Solana’s biggest wins is that its DeFi ecosystem can move at the speed of centralized markets. It doesn’t matter how advanced your strategies are or how complex your positions get.

The network’s speed means traders can rebalance instantly, while staying entirely onchain. That’s more than competing ecosystems like Ethereum can often promise without high fees or serious latency.

Often, though, the very need for collateral means capital ends up sitting idle as margin, earning nothing while waiting for trades to play out. That leads to higher opportunity costs, less capital efficiency and slower compounding for active traders.

But because users can now post syrupUSDC as margin on Drift, those same dollars can both secure your trades and earn passive income. Traders will be able to offset funding costs, free up cash flow and keep capital productive without changing their trading style.

More capital will flow into Solana’s onchain perps market, which also means Drift’s open interest should climb, and we’re more likely to see syrupUSDC adoption spread across more protocols.

SyrupUSDC is backed by Maple’s institutional lending pools and earns a steady yield from over-collateralized loans. Drift’s cross-collateral system treats it like USDC for margin purposes, but allows the yield stream to keep running while positions are open.

Altogether, their goal is to allow money to multitask, cutting out the dead time it would otherwise spend doing nothing.

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