Loopscale co-founder shares how order books are redefining lending on Solana

Solana Sessions

Each month, we’re diving into one founder’s journey building on Solana, as well as noteworthy network updates to help readers get up to speed.

The latest Solana Sessions podcast

For this month's Solana Sessions episode, we interviewed Mary Goonerate, CEO and co-founder of Loopscale.

Loopscale is building next-generation borrowing and lending infrastructure on Solana using order book technology. The protocol has generated over $1 billion in all-time volume since its public launch, moving beyond traditional pool-based models to enable bilateral credit agreements that mirror institutional finance.

We discuss her founder journey from studying computer science at Duke University to building DeFi infrastructure, why order books represent the future of credit markets, and how surviving a $5.8 million exploit made the protocol stronger.

Note: This is a part of the Solana Sessions campaign that Token Relations and the Talking Tokens podcast are doing, diving into founders’ journeys and startups building on Solana.The episode is available on Talking Tokens on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.

ReDeFining lending

The conversation around DeFi is often centered around trading and yield farming strategies. But behind the scenes, Loopscale is quietly rebuilding the fundamental infrastructure of how credit markets operate onchain.

At the helm is Mary Goonerate, who co-founded the company straight out of Duke University after meeting her co-founder Luke Truitt while working on a computer science group project. Their shared interest in alternative economic systems, sparked by reading "The Machinery of Freedom" together, laid the foundation to building a sophisticated lending protocol on Solana.

"Traditional borrow-lend is with a pool-based model," Goonerate explained. "For us, it felt like this huge gap in that after you had Solana, you had this innovation in spot and trading markets with Phoenix and Sierra. You went from Uniswap, which was this algorithmic approximation of markets, to these order book-based markets."

With over $1 billion in all-time volume and growing adoption of their "looping" products, Loopscale is demonstrating demand for sophisticated credit infrastructure in DeFi.

After exploring various layer-2 solutions, the team funnily enough discovered Solana at Bitcoin Miami 2021.

"The moment you start using the chain, you realize the experience is just so much better [on Solana]," Goonerate said. "After I installed Phantom, I was uninstalling other extensions."

But this wasn't just about user experience.

From a technical perspective, Solana's architecture enabled something not possible on other chains, a true order book-based lending, Goonerate said. "Order books are one of those big, only possible on Solana infrastructure pieces," she added. "They're the core of every efficient capital market."

In April, shortly after launching, Loopscale faced a $5.8 million exploit, but was able to recover all the funds within 72 hours through negotiations with the exploiter. This incident was a turning point for the team. "That slow growth is infinitely better than a risky fast growth curve," Goonerate reflected. "There is an inherent pressure to get new products out there."

Post-exploit, Loopscale implemented comprehensive security upgrades and now does full audits for every new feature, she noted.

While retail users have driven much of Loopscale's recent growth, Goonerate sees institutional adoption as the protocol's long-term opportunity. With 68% of SOL tokens staked and billions locked in various DeFi protocols, there's enormous amounts of idle liquidity that can't be productively used in traditional pool-based systems, she added.

This institutional focus extends beyond crypto-native assets as Loopscale is actively working with asset providers like Ether Fuse and Alpha Ledger to support real-world assets as collateral. "We'll see an infrastructural bridge where we have more of the products that are off-chain being actually run on the rails of crypto," Goonerate said.

Despite the exploit setback, Goonerate is bullish on the broader vision of Loopscale. "The exciting thing is about creating this global credit markets layer where more people have access to credit, more businesses have access to credit, at better terms," Goonerate said.

Global credit infrastructure will happen "slowly and then all at once."

Loopscale's sponsored vault product, launching at the end of June, represents a key step toward this vision. It allows any team to launch a credit fund at zero marginal cost, breaking the governance bottlenecks that have limited asset expansion in traditional pool-based protocols.

To outline a future where Solana becomes the backbone for both crypto-native and traditional finance infrastructure, "We want to see credit markets across all these different asset classes," Goonerate said.

Loopscale by the numbers

• Volume (all time): 1.215B

• Total Deposited: 48.72M

• Borrowed amount: $19.18M

The biggest updates on Solana

• Listen to a16z crypto’s podcast with Solana Co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko about what sets the network’s culture, values and tech apart from others

• Read a report by Syndica that analyze Solana’s dApp ecosystem and its revenues from May

• Solana signed an MOU with with VARA, Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority, to collaborate with regulators from the region

• Solana recorded $135B in DEX volumes, a 32% increase month-over-month, according to Blockworks Research’s May update

• Learn about Moody’s Ratings trial putting a municipal bond rating onchain with Alphaledger to the Solana network

• SOL is available on Avalanche via Wormhole NTT

Join the fun

• Enter the Solana Character Agent Hackathon by SendAI and Dreamnet

• Join SuperteamUK for the London Startup Village from June 9-18

• Sign up for Solana APEX Budapest on June 21

• Learn about funding opportunities for builders on Solana here

To get this newsletter delivered straight to your inbox, subscribe here.

This product was built by Token Relations.

This information is for entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial advice, nor should it be used to make investment decisions. Cryptocurrencies are high risk and you should consult a financial professional before making any financial decisions. Make sure you do your own research.