How a new lending market solves the liquidity cold start
Ran Wei, Pharos Network
Moment at 46:08Episode 3 · Credit Markets on Demand
White-Label Lending & Private Credit Platform
In short
White-label lending infrastructure you own and run under your brand, not a lending fund you borrow from. Built on Aave V3, and the engine behind the LandX Credit Gateway we built for LandX.
Reviewed by Luis Medeiros, Field CTO at ProtofireLast reviewed: October 2026
Trusted by teams building on-chain
Protofire builds white-label lending and private-credit platform infrastructure: an Aave-V3-based credit engine, productized as Arenas (arenas.fi), that lets an RWA platform, an EVM chain, or a fintech launch its own branded lending market and route capital to vetted borrowers, without writing the Solidity or commissioning the audits itself. The result is a white-label lending platform you own and run under your brand: you bring the brand and the borrowers, and the credit engine sits underneath.
Building credit infrastructure from scratch is the blocker: it takes rare Solidity and DeFi expertise, independent security audits, and 12-18 months before a single borrower can draw funds. Arenas collapses that to a branded market live in 3-6 months on battle-tested, forked Aave V3 contracts, extended for bespoke collateral that Aave's core markets do not list: tokenized real estate, invoices, future crop yields, intellectual property, and creator revenue, in either permissionless or KYC-gated form, on your own instance with your own risk policy.
Arenas is one of Protofire's ventures, seeded by Protofire Ventures, and we built the LandX Credit Gateway on it, deployed on Arbitrum, with Creators Bank in beta. We work with RWA originators, private-credit and fintech firms going on-chain, ecosystem chains that need a flagship lending market, and treasuries seeking real-world yield.
A full lending stack, deployed and maintained end to end
From isolated credit pools through RWA collateral modules to on-chain reporting, Protofire builds and operates every layer so clients own the brand and the borrower relationship.
01
Credit Pools
Isolated peer-to-pool markets per Arena, structured into Junior/Senior/Mezzanine tranches with CDO-style yield tokens; day-one liquidity via Aave V3 credit delegation alongside direct LP pools.
02
Collateral & RWA
Configurable collateral modules for tokenized real estate, invoices, future crop yields, IP tokens, NFTs, and revenue streams, single-originator asset classes that Aave's core markets do not list.
03
Risk & Oracle
Per-vertical LTV and liquidation thresholds, price and NAV oracle adapters, KYC/KYB-gated access controls for permissioned markets, and an underwriter-backed reinsurance pool for new asset classes.
04
Secondary & OTC
CDO-style yield tokens per tranche give lenders tradeable positions; compatible Aave V2+ fork deployments serve as an additional liquidity source alongside direct pool LPs.
05
Reporting
On-chain credit data indexed via subgraphs (The Graph or Subsquid) and exposed through a GraphQL API; Protofire operates continuous security monitoring and protocol maintenance.
01
What Arenas delivers
Most credit products in DeFi are funds you lend into. Arenas is the opposite: it's the factory and backbone, so the credit market launches under your brand, on your chain, governed by you. We deploy the contracts, the lending UI built on an SDK/API stack, the subgraphs, and the risk framework as a turnkey credit backend, then operate and maintain it.
The client owns the customer relationship and the borrower pipeline; Protofire owns the engineering and the security monitoring. Because non-crypto-native borrowers (farmers, originators, creators) interact with a familiar branded product rather than raw DeFi, adoption doesn't depend on teaching your users to navigate a money market. Benefits: a branded credit market without an in-house Solidity team · you own the brand, the data, and the borrower relationship · contracts and security operations maintained by Protofire, not your roadmap.
Arenas pairs a forked Aave V3 deployment (Pool, PoolConfigurator, oracle adapters) with the Credit Arena Engine, a multi-Arena factory and lending-pool manager that sits on top. The lending model is peer-to-pool with credit delegation, and liquidity is sourced three ways: Aave V3 credit delegation for day-one liquidity, direct lending pools per Arena, and any compatible Aave V2+ fork liquidity.
On the credit-delegation path, an Aave supplier that agrees to delegate its borrowing power can fund borrowers from day one, so they need not wait for a pool to fill; we help find those delegators and direct lenders. Each Arena is an isolated market with its own collateral type and risk parameters, and pools can be structured into Junior / Senior / Mezzanine tranches with CDO-style yield tokens (analogous to Aave's aTokens) for lenders.
On-chain credit data is indexed through subgraphs (The Graph or Subsquid) with a GraphQL API. Benefits: day-one liquidity via Aave credit delegation from suppliers who agree to delegate, alongside direct lenders · isolated, per-collateral risk so one Arena can't contaminate another · structured tranches that let conservative and yield-seeking lenders coexist.
Arenas exists for bespoke collateral that Aave's core markets do not list: RWA tokens issued as ERC-20 tokens, NFTs and intellectual-property tokens, invoice tokens, future revenue streams, and in-game assets. Aave's own permissioned market, Aave Horizon (live since August 2025), accepts a listed set of permissioned fund tokens, such as tokenized Treasury, CLO and private-credit funds, from holders each issuer allowlists; an originator with single-asset collateral, such as one platform's crop yields or one factor's invoices, needs a market of its own, under its own brand and risk policy.
An originator can stand up a market for tokenized real estate, invoice factoring, trade-finance receivables, or agricultural yields against the same engine. The live LandX deployment proves the agricultural case, and real-estate and invoice markets run on the same collateral-module pattern.
LTV and liquidation thresholds are tuned conservatively per vertical, with a reinsurance pool backed by underwriters to absorb default risk. Benefits: tokenized real estate, invoices, IP, and crop yields accepted as collateral · per-vertical LTV and liquidation tuning · an underwriter-backed reinsurance layer for new asset classes.
For regulated lending, Arenas runs in KYC/KYB-gated permissioned mode (only verified, eligible wallets borrow or lend), satisfying the requirements that keep funds and fintechs off open money markets. Credit scoring combines standard Aave V3 liquidation ratios with off-chain and revenue-based scoring (for creator verticals, via verified platform-API revenue) and KYC/KYB through partner providers.
The same engine serves both an open, Aave-style permissionless market and a closed institutional one, per Arena. Our crypto-backed credit blueprint documents the regulated version a bank or broker runs, lending fiat or stablecoins against pledged crypto that is marked and margined continuously. Benefits: KYC-gated markets that meet institutional lending requirements · on-chain plus off-chain and revenue-based credit scoring · permissioned and permissionless markets from one engine.
Arenas uses a hybrid commercial model, and we're explicit about it. A small license/maintenance fee per Arena deployed (which falls as deployment automates) sits alongside the core ongoing model: Protofire earns 10% of the interest borrowers pay, whatever the liquidity source.
That 10% covers protocol maintenance, security monitoring, and operations you'd otherwise staff. Because our revenue tracks borrower volume, we actively source liquidity introductions and help drive borrower acquisition. You get the full stack (contracts, lending UI SDK, subgraphs, risk framework, and credit delegation) as a maintained product, not a one-time build you then own the bugs in. Benefits: no separate maintenance, audit, or security-ops bill · incentive alignment: Protofire earns only when borrowers repay · Protofire actively sources liquidity and borrower introductions.
02
How a deployment works
1
Discovery & design
We map your chain, your borrower vertical, and your collateral type, and pick the market mode (permissioned vs. permissionless) and risk tiers. Deliverable: an Arena architecture and risk-parameter plan. (Foundation, roughly weeks 1-8.)
2
Engine & collateral
We deploy (or integrate an existing) Aave V3 fork plus the Credit Arena Engine, configure the lending pool and LTV/liquidation parameters, deploy the collateral module for your vertical, and ship the subgraph and GraphQL API. Deliverable: live, configured credit contracts and data layer.
3
Arena & liquidity
We launch the white-label, branded lending UI, integrate KYC/KYB if required, stand up credit delegation from Aave V3, and begin liquidity-provider onboarding. Deliverable: a branded Arena with day-one liquidity.
4
Mainnet launch
First Arena goes live with real borrowers, liquidity is bootstrapped from Aave delegation plus direct LPs, and the 10% revenue model goes operational. Deliverable: a live credit market with an active first borrower cohort. Total: 3-6 months (about 12-26 weeks).
03
What you can launch with Arenas
A branded RWA-backed lending market on an EVM chain
Real-estate-tokenization lending (borrow against tokenized property)
Invoice factoring and trade-finance credit on-chain
Agricultural / future-yield credit (built for LandX)
Creator-economy credit lines (future revenue as collateral)
NFT- and IP-backed loans
Permissioned, KYC-gated institutional lending
DAO and treasury liquidity access
A flagship DeFi credit primitive to anchor a chain's ecosystem
White-label branded lending for ecosystem partners
04
Built for LandX: the LandX Credit Gateway
Arenas isn't a prototype. For LandX, an agricultural RWA platform, we built the LandX Credit Gateway on Arenas, deploying the Credit Arena Engine on Arbitrum. The gateway was designed so farmers could tokenize future crop yields and borrow stablecoins against them, the kind of single-originator real-world collateral Aave's core markets do not list.
Our approach: configure the crop-yield collateral module, set conservative LTV and liquidation thresholds for a new asset class, and source day-one liquidity through Aave credit delegation alongside direct lenders so the market would not open cold. The engagement also set the commercial model: Protofire takes 10% of borrower interest plus a white-label IP-license fee paid partly in LNDX tokens.
A second vertical, Creators Bank (Protofire incubation), is in beta, with revenue-based credit scoring drawn from verified platform-API revenue.
05
Built by the team that helped build Aave
Arenas is built by Protofire, a blockchain engineering company with 250+ shipped projects across 60+ networks and 95+ protocols since 2016. The credibility that matters for a lending product: the team has contributed to Aave's and MakerDAO's core development, with domain depth in collateral listing, CDP stablecoins, liquidation markets, and RWA-collateralized lending.
Arenas's co-founders include engineers who prototyped a Digital Euro for the ECB. Protofire deployed Safe on 120+ EVM networks, where it secures $2B+, wrote external adapters for Chainlink, and maintains Solhint, the open-source Solidity linter used by 1M+ developers.
Arenas itself is a Protofire venture, seeded by Protofire Ventures, so the engine routing your capital is one we have skin in. And we already built the LandX Credit Gateway on Arenas, so what you deploy has been delivered for a client before.
“Launch a branded credit market in 3-6 months without building DeFi infrastructure from scratch.”
FAQ
What is Arenas?
Arenas (arenas.fi) is Protofire's white-label lending infrastructure for real-world assets and digital assets. It's a credit engine: a forked Aave V3 deployment (Pool, PoolConfigurator, oracle adapters) plus the Credit Arena Engine factory on top. That engine lets an RWA platform, EVM chain, or fintech launch its own branded lending market and route capital to vetted borrowers, without writing the Solidity, commissioning the audits, or running the security operations in-house. Protofire deploys the contracts, the lending UI, the subgraphs, and the risk framework as a turnkey backend, then operates and maintains it, while the client keeps the brand, the data, and the borrower relationship. Each Arena is an isolated market with its own collateral type and risk parameters. We built the LandX Credit Gateway on it, on Arbitrum, so farmers could borrow against tokenized crop yields, and it's one of Protofire's ventures.
What does "white-label lending infrastructure" actually give me?
The full credit backend, running under your brand: forked Aave V3 lending contracts, the Credit Arena Engine, a branded lending/borrowing UI on an SDK/API stack, subgraphs and a GraphQL API for on-chain credit data, configurable risk tiers, optional KYC/KYB permissioning, and credit delegation for day-one liquidity. The lending model is peer-to-pool, and liquidity is sourced three ways (Aave V3 credit delegation, direct lending pools per Arena, and compatible Aave V2+ fork liquidity), so borrowers don't wait for a pool to fill before they can draw. Pools can be structured into Junior/Senior/Mezzanine tranches with CDO-style yield tokens for lenders. Protofire deploys it, maintains it, monitors its security, and helps source liquidity, so you skip the 12-18 months a from-scratch build takes and own the brand, the data, and the borrower relationship instead of the bugs.
Which assets can borrowers use as collateral?
ERC-20 tokens, RWA tokens (tokenized real estate, invoices, trade-finance receivables, crop yields), NFTs and intellectual-property tokens, future revenue streams (e.g. creator earnings, verified via platform APIs), and in-game assets. Apart from standard ERC-20s, these are bespoke, often single-originator assets that Aave's core markets do not list. Each Arena is an isolated market with its own collateral type and conservatively tuned LTV and liquidation thresholds, so a new or higher-risk asset class can't contaminate the others. An originator can stand up a market for tokenized real estate, invoice factoring, trade-finance receivables, or agricultural yields against the same engine, with a reinsurance pool backed by underwriters to absorb default risk on new asset classes. The LandX Credit Gateway we built on Arbitrum covers the agricultural case, letting farmers tokenize future crop yields and borrow stablecoins against them.
We're an RWA originator. Can our holders borrow against their tokenized assets?
Yes, that's a primary use case. If you've tokenized an asset (real estate, invoices, IP, future revenue) and your holders want to collateralize it, Arenas gives you an embedded credit market for exactly that, in permissionless or KYC-gated form, without you building DeFi infrastructure from scratch. We deploy the collateral module for your vertical, set conservative LTV and liquidation thresholds for the asset class, and source day-one liquidity through Aave credit delegation, from Aave suppliers that agree to delegate, alongside direct lenders. Because non-crypto-native borrowers interact with a familiar branded product rather than raw DeFi, adoption doesn't depend on teaching your users to navigate a money market, and you keep the customer relationship and the borrower pipeline. We built the LandX Credit Gateway on this pattern, so holders of tokenized future crop yields could borrow stablecoins against them on Arbitrum.
How long does it take to launch an Arena, and what does it cost?
A branded Arena typically goes live in 3-6 months (about 12-26 weeks) versus the 12-18 months a from-scratch build takes. The deployment moves through discovery and Arena design, the engine-and-collateral build (the Aave V3 fork plus the Credit Arena Engine, LTV and liquidation configuration, the collateral module for your vertical, and the subgraph and GraphQL API), then the branded Arena and liquidity setup with KYC/KYB if required, and mainnet launch with a first borrower cohort. The engagement is scoped depending on chain, vertical, and compliance needs, alongside the core ongoing model: Protofire earns 10% of the interest borrowers pay, which covers protocol maintenance, security monitoring, and operations you'd otherwise staff. Because our revenue tracks borrower volume, we actively source liquidity introductions and help drive borrower acquisition. We confirm the exact scope and estimate on the first call.
We already have Aave deployed on our chain. Why do we need Arenas?
Aave's core markets are money markets for liquid, mostly crypto-native assets, lent over-collateralized. Aave also runs Horizon, a permissioned RWA market live since 26 August 2025, where holders allowlisted by each issuer borrow stablecoins against a listed set of fund tokens, such as tokenized Treasury, CLO and private-credit funds. Arenas covers what neither is set up for: bespoke collateral such as single-originator assets, crop yields and invoices, NFT/IP-backed loans, revenue-based credit lines, a market under your own brand on your own instance with your own risk policy and KYC rules, and the white-label factory that lets ecosystem partners launch their own branded Arenas. It pairs the forked Aave V3 deployment with the Credit Arena Engine, a multi-Arena factory and lending-pool manager that adds isolated per-collateral markets, Junior/Senior/Mezzanine tranches, and credit scoring that blends Aave V3 liquidation ratios with off-chain and revenue-based signals. The two are complementary: if Aave's DAO deploys natively to your chain, Arenas integrates that deployment as its liquidity backbone, draws day-one liquidity through Aave credit delegation, and keeps operating the Arena engine on top. You get bespoke collateral, your own brand and your own risk policy on top of Aave, without giving up the Aave liquidity you already have.
How is the default risk handled?
Per Arena: conservative LTV and liquidation thresholds tuned per vertical, isolated markets per collateral type so one Arena can't contaminate another, and structured Junior/Senior/Mezzanine tranches with CDO-style yield tokens that let conservative and yield-seeking lenders coexist. Credit scoring combines standard Aave V3 liquidation ratios with off-chain and revenue-based scoring. For creator verticals, repayments can be automated from verified platform-API revenue; for RWA markets, collateral is tokenized with on-chain liquidation mechanics, and KYC/KYB runs through partner providers in permissioned mode. A reinsurance pool backed by underwriters can absorb default risk on new asset classes in exchange for yield. We built the same mechanics into the LandX Credit Gateway: conservative thresholds for a new asset class, on-chain liquidation, and day-one liquidity sourced through Aave credit delegation alongside direct lenders so the market would not open cold.
Can we launch crypto-backed loans, lending against a customer's held crypto?
Yes. Crypto collateral is one of the collateral modules Arenas supports, so a fintech, exchange, or broker with crypto custody can launch a branded product where customers borrow stablecoins against blue-chip crypto they already hold, without selling it. We deploy an isolated market per collateral asset with conservative LTV and liquidation thresholds, wire in Chainlink price feeds for manipulation-resistant valuation, and source day-one liquidity through Aave credit delegation, from Aave suppliers that agree to delegate, alongside direct lenders. The lending logic runs on a forked, hardened Aave V3 base, and you keep the customer relationship and the brand. For fintechs adding this alongside other on-chain products, see blockchain infrastructure for fintechs.
What is the best crypto lending platform, and should we build on one or launch our own?
There is no single best platform; it depends on whether you are lending as an institution or offering lending to your own users. The on-chain venues institutions and builders actually use in 2026 are Aave (the largest; v4 has been live on Ethereum since March 2026 alongside v3, and Aave Horizon serves permissioned RWA collateral), Morpho (isolated-market design, the base for Coinbase's crypto-backed USDC loans and, since September 2025, for Societe Generale-FORGE's EURCV and USDCV lending vaults), Spark, and Maple Finance for overcollateralized, crypto-backed institutional loans. Building directly on one of those makes sense if you want to be a lender or a liquidity provider. If you want to offer lending under your own brand, with your own collateral policy, rates, and user experience, deploying and operating your own market (which is what Arenas does, on isolated, audited infrastructure) gives you control a shared public pool does not. We help you decide which fits and do not lock you to one protocol. Value-locked figures move: on 18 October 2026 DefiLlama showed about $16.9B on Aave v3 against about $0.65B on v4, so check DefiLlama for current numbers. For tokenized funds and private-credit tokens specifically, which venues hold real collateral and which only list it is tracked in lending against tokenized assets.
Is crypto lending safe, and how is it different from the CeFi lenders that collapsed?
The lenders that collapsed in 2022 and 2023, Celsius, BlockFi, Genesis, Voyager, were custodial CeFi businesses: they took title to customer funds, rehypothecated them, and made undercollateralized bets, so when Three Arrows Capital failed, withdrawals froze. On-chain overcollateralized lending works differently: it is non-custodial, borrowers post more than 100% collateral, under-water positions are liquidated automatically, and funds sit in audited smart contracts. That removed the custodial-rehypothecation failure mode that sank CeFi, but it is not risk-free. On-chain lending has its own failure modes: smart-contract and bridge exploits, oracle manipulation, and bad debt. In April 2026 a bridge exploit let an attacker post fraudulent collateral on Aave and borrow roughly $190 million against it; lenders were ultimately made whole by a coordinated ecosystem effort rather than by the protocol's automatic mechanics, and the episode is the honest counter-example, since overcollateralization assumes the collateral is real and correctly priced. We build with that in mind: conservative collateral parameters, reliable price feeds, audited contracts, and monitoring, so a client's market is defensible rather than merely launched.
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