Summary
Changelog:
- September 29th, 2026, the add cap for USDC on Maple Spoke has been adjusted to 0 in order to retain the sole entry point for USDC supply-only liquidity on Arc Core Hub and simplify user experience.
- October 1st, 2026, updated price feed recommendation to include CAPO snapshotRatio and snapshotTimestamp.
LlamaRisk supports the onboarding of syrupUSDC to Aave V4 on Arc. syrupUSDC on Arc is a Chainlink CCIP representation of Maple’s Ethereum pool share, and its value, redemption and credit exposure all sit on Ethereum. The Arc market is very small and controlled by the issuer. Its supply of about 422,500 tokens is 0.05% of the total, Maple holds effectively all of it, and the single Uniswap V4 pool can absorb about $500,000 of selling before its USDC side is exhausted. Issuance on Arc can also be expanded by a 3-of-5 Safe with no delay, which Maple has committed to put behind a timelock.
syrupUSDC’s contract on Arc cannot be upgraded and matches the Base deployment Aave already lists, and because it has no pause function, blocklist or transfer fee, Maple has no way to block a liquidation or a repayment. Circle’s USDC blocklist, which Arc enforces on every transaction, remains the one control that can stop a listed address from bidding in a liquidation or repaying its debt. The bridge route is owned by Chainlink under its own timelock, so Maple cannot repoint it, and it carries the same bridge rate limits as every other syrupUSDC deployment.
The main residual risk is issuance, since the admin Safe can make any address a minter with immediate effect and the token has no supply ceiling, which would let that minter create unlimited supply on Arc in the next transaction. Base places the same contract behind a three-day timelock, and Maple has committed to the same arrangement on Arc. Redemption is the other gap, as Arc has no native redemption path and a holder exits either by selling into the single liquidity pool or by bridging to Ethereum and redeeming there, which takes two to five minutes end to end under normal conditions.
The initial supply cap of 25 million syrupUSDC, about $30 million, is sized to the bridge-and-redeem exit, which clears about $10 million an hour, and will be raised in stages as demand and liquidity develop. LlamaRisk will reassess if the committed timelock is not put in place or if Maple’s loan book inidcates liquidity stress.
The full assessment can be found in its corresponding thread.
Aave V4 Specific Parameters
We recommend onboarding syrupUSDC as a collateral-only reserve on a new Maple Spoke attached to the Arc Core Hub, with USDC as the only borrowable asset. The Core Hub holds a single USDC reserve shared across its spokes, so USDC drawn against syrupUSDC on the Maple Spoke comes from the same liquidity that serves borrowers posting cirBTC and WETH on the Main Spoke. As of September 29, 2026, the hub holds 143.3M USDC with 67.5M drawn, a utilization of 47.1% and a drawn rate of 2.14%.
Placing a yield-bearing credit asset in the same hub as blue-chip volatile collateral calls for a risk-adjusted rate environment. The risk behind syrupUSDC collateral is credit exposure to Maple’s institutional loan book, combined with an exit that runs through a bridge and an Ethereum redemption queue, while cirBTC and WETH carry price risk in deep markets. Without a premium, USDC suppliers would earn the same rate on both kinds of debt. We therefore recommend a Collateral Risk of 20% on syrupUSDC. In Aave V4 the collateral risk acts as a multiplier on the drawn rate, so debt backed by syrupUSDC accrues interest at r_{drawn} \times (1 + 0.20). At the current drawn rate this is 2.57% against 2.14% for debt backed by cirBTC or WETH, and at the 90% optimal usage ratio it is 4.92% against 4.10%.
The premium accrues to USDC suppliers net of the liquidity fee, which compensates them for the credit exposure, and it tempers leveraged syrupUSDC demand so that part of the hub’s liquidity stays available for cirBTC and WETH borrowers. Setting it at listing also avoids repricing positions that were opened without a premium. We expect Maple liquidity providers to draw USDC as soon as the spoke opens, and we will adjust the collateral risk through the Risk Steward as borrow demand develops, with the aim of keeping USDC utilization below the optimal usage ratio.
For the premium to accrue, the Core Hub’s Risk Premium Threshold for USDC on the Maple Spoke has to sit at or above the collateral risk, since with the default value of 0 any USDC borrow against syrupUSDC would revert. We recommend setting it to 1000%, the maximum collateral risk the protocol allows, so that the collateral risk can be tuned through the Risk Steward without a separate governance change to the threshold.
Dynamic Liquidation Bonus Configuration
| Chain |
Hub |
Spoke |
Liquidation Bonus Factor |
Target Health Factor |
Health Factor For Max Bonus |
| Arc |
Core |
Maple Spoke |
100.00% |
1.0277 |
0.99 |
Spoke Parameters
| Chain |
Hub |
Spoke |
Reserve |
Collateral Factor |
Max Liquidation Bonus |
Borrowable |
Collateral Risk |
Liquidation Fee |
Risk Premium Threshold |
Receive Shares |
| Arc |
Core |
Maple Spoke |
syrupUSDC |
92.00% |
4.00% |
FALSE |
20% |
10.00% |
0 |
TRUE |
| Arc |
Core |
Maple Spoke |
USDC |
0.00% |
- |
TRUE |
- |
- |
1000% |
TRUE |
Add and Draw Caps
| Chain |
Hub |
Spoke |
Reserve |
Add Cap |
Draw Cap |
| Arc |
Core |
Maple Spoke |
syrupUSDC |
25,000,000 |
0 |
| Arc |
Core |
Maple Spoke |
USDC |
0 |
23,000,000 |
Price feed Recommendation
We recommend pricing syrupUSDC through a Capped Adjustable Price Oracle (CAPO) adapter that multiplies the Chainlink SYRUPUSDC/USDC exchange rate feed on Arc by the capped USDC/USD feed Aave already uses there, which caps USDC at 1.04. The exchange rate feed follows the Ethereum vault’s exit rate, net of unrealised losses, and updates on a 24-hour heartbeat with a 0.05% deviation threshold.
CAPO Configuration
We recommend the following CAPO configuration:
| Parameter |
Value |
maxYearlyRatioGrowthPercent |
8.05% |
MINIMUM_SNAPSHOT_DELAY |
7 days |
snapshotRatio |
1184379252104982104 |
snapshotTimestamp |
1790088434 |
Disclaimer
This review was independently prepared by LlamaRisk, a DeFi risk service provider funded in part by the Aave DAO. LlamaRisk is not directly affiliated with the protocol(s) reviewed in this assessment and did not receive any compensation from the protocol(s) or their affiliated entities for this work.
The information provided should not be construed as legal, financial, tax, or professional advice.