Mary Gooneratne | Why DeFi Credit Markets Are Being Rebuilt From Scratch

On today’s Talking Tokens episode, Jacquelyn sat down with Mary Gooneratne, co-founder of Loopscale. Loopscale is a lending protocol on Solana designed to give sophisticated users more control over capital, collateral, and credit risk. They discuss how Mary went from building on Ethereum during DeFi summer to pivoting toward Solana, why the protocol shifted from pool-based lending to order-book-style credit markets, and how Loopscale recovered all user funds after a $5.8 million exploit. Mary breaks down the differences between institutional and retail borrowing behavior, how its fixed yield looping product hit $1 billion in volume, and why she believes DeFi can rebuild global credit markets more transparently than traditional finance. This episode 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. TIMESTAMPS: (0:00) - Mary’s background and founding Loopscale (2:24) - From tokenized whiskey casks to crypto credit markets (4:23) - Why lending hasn’t evolved like trading on Solana (6:01) - Pool-based model limitations and capital inefficiency (8:11) - Why Solana was the only viable chain (11:02) - Inside the $5.8M exploit and recovery process (13:08) - Lessons from the hack and security upgrades (17:12) - New risk controls and protocol design changes (20:03) - Who uses Loopscale: LPs, whales, and institutions (21:24) - What products are growing fastest (24:07) - Why idle Solana liquidity is a huge opportunity (25:58) - The future: real-world assets and institutional lending (27:10) - What institutions want from on-chain credit (28:21) - Global credit markets and underserved borrowers (30:13) - What’s next: sponsored credit vaults (30:29) - Final advice: talk often and talk to builders

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