Private Credit evaluated across published default and loss history, named underwriter and first-loss capital, depositor's legal claim, and redemption terms and gating.
Ranked here: private credit protocols for lending onchain to real-world borrowers, compared on default and loss history, the named underwriter, your legal claim and redemption terms. Not ranked here: anything other than a protocol for lending onchain to real-world borrowers.
#1 of 7 · published ranking
Kasu Finance
78ChainChoice Score
4199
Why it leads
Kasu Finance scores higher than everything else in this ranking on its underwriter identity and skin.
Show the arithmetic
Best in this ranking on underwriter identity and skin (8/10; next 6/10)
Cost
Not priced· No comparable price is published
ReviewedRe-read due since The published cadence is 45 days; this page's next read was due on 11 November 2026.Published Methodology v2026.11.1
How this page is reviewed
Reviewed means every product ranked on this page was read against its sources on or after that date; every ranked category is re-read at least every 45 days. Models research, extract and parse. A deterministic engine ranks. Every quote passes an adversarial refute pass.
No provider can pay for a position in this table. The code that computes this order cannot read which links carry a referral code, and every build proves it. Every score below rebuilds from the published criteria.Ranking v2026.11.1 · 4 criteria · 7 products · same inputs, same order
How we review · 7 ranked of 7 assessed · 4 criteria · 0 sponsor weight
How we review
7ranked
7assessed
4criteria
0sponsor weight
Recommendation first, comparison only if needed.
Reviewed and rechecked on the current cycle.
Commercial relationships disclosed before clickout.
Personal comparison
Private Credit ranked comparison
No comparable price is published; ranking still uses verified product evidence.
RankProviderBest fitScore
1
Kasu FinanceTranched USDC lending against Australia...Top ranked
Named underwriter and first-loss capital — 8/10Trade-off: In a liquidity squeeze the people who get their money out first are the people holdin...
78score
Check availability for your country
Kasu Finance · kasu.finance. Provider links appear once we know which country you are browsing from: ChainChoice links to providers only where it serves in full.
Commission: This provider pays ChainChoice nothing for this link. Disclosure
Crypto products are high risk. Check the provider is authorised where you live before you deposit.
2
Maple FinancePooled stablecoin lending to institutio...
Depositor's legal claim — 9/10Trade-off: Maple is the name that defined onchain private credit and it has largely left the bus...
77score
Check availability for your country
Maple Finance · maple.finance. Provider links appear once we know which country you are browsing from: ChainChoice links to providers only where it serves in full.
Commission: This provider pays ChainChoice nothing for this link. Disclosure
Crypto products are high risk. Check the provider is authorised where you live before you deposit.
3
ParetoCycle-based credit vaults lending stabl...
Redemption terms and gating — 8/10Trade-off: Read the borrower list before accepting the category label. Corrected during verifica...
69score
Check availability for your country
Pareto · pareto.credit. Provider links appear once we know which country you are browsing from: ChainChoice links to providers only where it serves in full.
Commission: This provider pays ChainChoice nothing for this link. Disclosure
Crypto products are high risk. Check the provider is authorised where you live before you deposit.
Published default and loss history — 4/10Trade-off: Check which Clearpool product you are buying, because the two have opposite risk prof...
66score
Check availability for your country
Clearpool · clearpool.finance. Provider links appear once we know which country you are browsing from: ChainChoice links to providers only where it serves in full.
Commission: This provider pays ChainChoice nothing for this link. Disclosure
Crypto products are high risk. Check the provider is authorised where you live before you deposit.
Same score, not joint · ordered by weighted total (36.40 against 36.30)
5
Huma FinancePermissionless stablecoin deposits fund...
Named underwriter and first-loss capital — 6/10Trade-off: The redemption cap is the term that matters and it is set by Huma, not by contract wi...
66score
Check availability for your country
Huma Finance · huma.finance. Provider links appear once we know which country you are browsing from: ChainChoice links to providers only where it serves in full.
Commission: This provider pays ChainChoice nothing for this link. Disclosure
Crypto products are high risk. Check the provider is authorised where you live before you deposit.
Published default and loss history — 5/10Trade-off: Do not deposit: this entry is included as evidence of how the category fails, not as...
61score
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Goldfinch · goldfinch.finance. Provider links appear once we know which country you are browsing from: ChainChoice links to providers only where it serves in full.
Commission: This provider pays ChainChoice nothing for this link. Disclosure
Crypto products are high risk. Check the provider is authorised where you live before you deposit.
1 more assessed and ranked below — none of them hidden for commercial reasons.
Ranked on 4 published criteria weighted 30/25/25/20, which set goal alignment — 30 of the 86 points. The rest: regional access 20 (constant here), evidence depth 18 (constant here), ease of use 10 (constant here), institutional trust 8 (constant here). Profile match is shown in breakdowns but carries no weight.
How you can lose money here, and what the ranking scores
Insolvency failure: the firm or issuer that owes you cannot pay.
Scored by Published default and loss history · 30% (Kasu Finance 4/10, Maple Finance 3/10, Pareto 2/10)
Scored by Named underwriter and first-loss capital · 25% (Kasu Finance 8/10, Maple Finance 5/10, Pareto 5/10)
Scored by Depositor's legal claim · 25% (Kasu Finance 7/10, Maple Finance 9/10, Pareto 4/10)
Exit failure: you cannot get out at par, on time, or with what is yours.
Scored by Redemption terms and gating · 20% (Kasu Finance 5/10, Maple Finance 7/10, Pareto 8/10)
Not assessed by this ranking: Contract failure, Control failure, Regulatory failure, Execution failure. A high place says nothing about these; the Methodology tab says what each means.
Audit
Infrastructure
Methodology
2026.11.1
published 10 November 2026
Providers tracked
860+
across 121 categories
Last verified
27 September 2026
newest dated pricing or sentiment read
Named on the roster
2 people
managing directors · 6 automated processes
Decision guide
What matters most before choosing in this category
Weighted on published default and loss history (30), named underwriter and first-loss capital (25), the depositor's legal claim (25), and redemption terms and gating (20). The finding that shapes the category: not one of the seven publishes a per-loan default and loss history with amounts and dates. The highest score awarded on that 30%-weighted criterion was 4 out of 10, and it went to a protocol young enough not to have had a loss yet. Every advertised APY here is a number offered without the loss record that would let anyone judge it. Size is misleading too — Maple is 52.8% of the $4.46bn across these seven, and its own risk page says Maple is not a lender, with a collateral ratio of 147.33% read from its GraphQL API on 2026-08-07. Most of this category's headline size is a crypto-collateralised money market wearing the private-credit label.
Can you find what this protocol has lost, with amounts and dates, from the protocol itself?
Who underwrites the loans, and do they have first-loss capital at risk?
What is your legal claim, against whom — and can you actually withdraw today?
Current engine lead
The #1 overall and the scoring weights
Kasu FinanceData checked Sep 2026
Tranched USDC lending against Australian, US, UK and Canadian accounting-firm receivables originated by a named third-party credit originator.
Tranched USDC lending against Australian, US, UK and Canadian accounting-firm receivables originated by a named third-party credit originator. Strongest on named underwriter and first-loss capital (8/10): Kasu names the Credit Originator behind each Lending Strategy (Apxium, InvoiceMate) and states it requested no First Loss Capital from Apxium, citing its zero loss history after 8 years of lending. Losses hit the originator's excess spread first; Rixon Capital's senior facility ranks ahead of Kasu lenders. Weakest on published default and loss history (4/10): Kasu documents the loss order (originator excess spread, then lender interest, then principal; junior option first) and publishes 0% lender losses as at 27 September 2026, but no realised loss figure of its own; its risk reporting page is marked coming soon. Published price: "You pay no platform fee. All platform fees are paid by the Credit Originator, and the Effective Interest Rate shown is the rate you receive." — Kasu user docs page "How fees are charged" (kasu.finance/docs/user/risk-warnings/how-fees-are-charged, marked…
Best forNamed underwriter and first-loss capital — 8/10
Main tradeoffIn a liquidity squeeze the people who get their money out first are the people holding the most $KASU. The loyalty page states that Loyalty Level 3 is reached where locked rKASU "equals 5% or greater" of your combined USDC lending, and Level 3 confers "First order priority for Withdrawal Requests". A depositor holding no token is structurally behind token holders in the queue, and one who chose a fixed-rate strategy cannot join the queue at all. Note also that the APY shown in the app is gross: the docs state the quoted figure "refers to Gross APY (before fees)" and that 10% of interest earned is deducted, so a 10% gross quote is 9% net. DefiLlama put Kasu's TVL at $11,771,166 on 7 August 2026, so this is a small book concentrated on a single originator, Apxium, whose eight-year zero-loss record is self-reported and is the load-bearing fact in the entire proposition.
Verify before signup"You pay no platform fee. All platform fees are paid by the Credit Originator, and the Effective Interest Rate shown is the rate you receive." — Kasu user docs page "How fees are charged" (kasu.finance/docs/user/risk-warnings/how-fees-are-charged, marked "Last updated Sep 24, 2026", fetched 27 September 2026). The only lender-paid charge on that page is the bank on- and off-ramp: "Converting between your bank's currency and stablecoins costs 0.5% of the amount sent, in both directions: 0.1% charged by Wayex and 0.4% charged by Bridge." The page's own worked example: "Adding funds, 1,000 US dollars less the 5 dollar fee arrives as 995 USDC"; stablecoins transferred in from another wallet "involve no conversion and no fee". No lending rate is published on this page; rates are set per Lending Strategy and Lending Option and shown in the app. Changed since the 7 August 2026 read: the fee model the pool quoted (a deduction from lender interest, with the dApp rate described as gross) is replaced in the new user docs by a zero lender platform fee paid by the Credit Originator. The older GitBook page docs.kasu.finance/lending-with-kasu/earning-interest.md still served HTTP 200 on 27 September 2026 with the old deduction wording, so two Kasu-hosted pages now disagree; the site navigation links the new user docs.
Weighted criteria
Published default and loss history30%
Named underwriter and first-loss capital25%
Depositor's legal claim25%
Redemption terms and gating20%
Methodology
How this category is reviewed
Reviewed on published default and loss history, named underwriter and first-loss capital, depositor's legal claim, and redemption terms and gating.
The order on this page is the published ranking for this category. Every criterion, weight and source behind it is on the methodology page.
Frequently asked
Questions people ask before choosing private credit
Where do I find a protocol's default history?
Usually nowhere, and the omissions are specific enough to check. Maple's page titled Transparency, standfirsted "Protocol analytics, treasury data, and yield performance", carries AUM, APY, deposit and token-price charts and no loss history at all; the word "Orthogonal" — the counterparty whose December 2022 default is the best-known credit event in this category — appears zero times on that page and zero times in Maple's documentation index. Goldfinch's own wind-down proposal GIP-87 of 12 June 2026 says only that across approximately $100m of loans a number of pools experienced serious performance issues: no borrower, no amount, no date. The number it omits is public on chain — its SeniorPool returned sharePrice() of 0.944448 at block 25,703,840 on 2026-08-07.
Can I withdraw when I want to?
Read the contract, not the homepage. Goldfinch's legacy Senior Pool returned usdcAvailable() of 0 against totalLoansOutstanding() of $53,053,838.53 and 37,994,196.46 FIDU of outstanding claims, all read at block 25,703,840 — there is literally nothing to pay out — while the page above it still advertises a 10-12% net estimated yield. Elsewhere the terms contradict themselves rather than the chain: Kasu states that losses are not pooled and that you can opt out, on a protocol whose own page describes a mutualised loss waterfall. Redemption terms carry 20% of the weight here because a yield you cannot exit is not a yield.
Is the advertised APY the one I would earn?
Often not, in ways that are checkable. Maple advertises 4.9% for syrupUSDC; its own GraphQL series shows 4.90% on 2026-07-31 falling every day since to 4.68% on 2026-08-06, so the marketing figure is seven days stale, and against a benchmark of 3.52% the real spread for taking this credit risk is 1.16 percentage points rather than the ~1.4 implied. Kasu's advertised APY is gross of its 10% fee. And Clearpool's uncollateralised credit product — the thing this category is actually about — held $255,837 on 2026-08-07 against $17,612,657 in its fully-reserved T-bill pool: the product with no published APY, no notice period and no loss history holds 1.4% of the money.
Reviewed27 September 2026Method4 criteriaCategoryprivate_credit
Not financial advice · For informational purposes only · Always do your own research
