Understanding On-Chain Crowdlending in 2025: Insights from the 8lends Platform

On-chain crowdlending has become one of the most successful real-world uses for decentralized finance, bringing transparency, automation, and global accessibility to lending markets. In 2025, platforms like 8lends are establishing a new type of financial ecosystem where businesses and projects can access credit more easily, and investors can earn solid returns.

8lends currently offers interest rates of up to 25%. In less than a year, the platform has raised over $5M, and $814K has been repaid to 1203 investors.

How On-Chain Crowdlending Works

The idea is simple: borrowers and lenders connect directly. There’s no middleman. Smart contracts automate everything – issuing loans, taking repayments, and managing liquidations.

Funds are pooled from multiple lenders, recorded on the chain, and managed without a central authority. This speeds up the whole process, cuts costs, and makes it possible for money to flow worldwide without friction.

The 8lends Approach

The project was launched by a Swiss company, Maclear AG, a fintech firm founded in 2020 that has funded well over €60M so far. 8lends is the Web3 version of their P2P lending model, but with more transparency, automation, and global reach thanks to blockchain.

8lends has always stood for regulated, asset-backed lending – in other words, its USDC loans are collateralized by real-world business assets, such as property or equipment. Borrowers are also subject to Know-Your-Business, AML, and KYC compliance checks and enjoy rights afforded by the GDPR. So far, it has only encountered 1 single default in its history.

The system works as follows:

Potential borrowers submit a funding application.
The 8lends platform scores their financial health and submits assets across 40 different points, using methods similar to the three major credit agencies.
Lenders choose which businesses and projects they’d like to invest in, with a minimum amount of $100 – this can be for passive income, for impact-driven reasons, or both.

8lends supports wallets from:

WalletConnect
Metamask
Coinbase
Rainbow
Trust Wallet
Rabby Wallet
1inch
Zerion
C98
Safepal

Many of the projects it is involved in are in green energy, agriculture, a variety of small businesses, and loans. The platform also issued 100,000,000 of its own $8LNDS tokens through a reward program. The token currently trades at 0.003382 USDC.

Who Uses the Platform

The 8lends user base ranges from retail lenders seeking passive yield to crypto-native enterprises and SMEs that need capital without having to rely on traditional banking, which is notoriously rigorous and has shut many worthwhile businesses out of the opportunity to acquire financing.

Particularly appealing to investors are the predictable fixed interest models and the ability to track loans in real time. Small businesses and Web3 projects benefit from being able to skip lengthy, old-fashioned credit checks and gain access to global lenders. On their part, institutions exploring digital asset credit markets use 8lends for diversification and risk-controlled returns. This makes for a healthy marketplace where capital flows efficiently and inclusively.

Outlook for 2025

Currently, our investors are earning strong returns, with the platform’s median APR at about 23%. One of the reasons for the project’s expansion is that it does not charge fees to the investors. It also provides a 6% bonus for referrals and the same amount for proof of loan. First-time registrants get an initiation fee of 30 USDC as well. The project has been audited by Certik and Cyberscope.

Conclusion

8lends offers a stable and secure investment opportunity for both Web 2 and Web 3 investors. By combining traditional credit standards with blockchain automation and compliance, the platform enables reliable, transparent lending, giving investors consistent returns while opening access to capital for businesses and projects that might otherwise be overlooked.

The post Understanding On-Chain Crowdlending in 2025: Insights from the 8lends Platform appeared first on BeInCrypto.