In a feud over bitcoin (BTC) yield products, Core Foundation has accused former partner Maple Finance of IP infringement in plans to launch a rival product, syrupBTC.
The Foundation behind Core, the “Bitcoin Everything Chain,” has secured a Cayman Islands court injunction in a bid to halt Maple’s launch of syrupBTC. It accuses Maple of “breaches of its commercial agreement” and “misusing Core Foundation’s confidential information and work product.”
The injunction also prohibits Maple “from dealing in CORE tokens pending arbitration.”
From sweet to sour
In a statement on X, Core described how the two entities worked together from early 2025 to develop a BTC staking yield offering. The product, lstBTC, allowed users to earn yield on BTC collateral held with reputable custodians.
It claims that by mid-2025, Maple had “violated the 24-month exclusivity clause” in beginning development of “rival product” syrupBTC which Core believes is “directly competitive with lstBTC.”
The post also accuses Maple of mishandling $150 million worth of BTC in an “early, OTC version of… [what] would ultimately become lstBTC,” which is now facing impairment.
Core states that it duly participated in price protection programmes of the product up until discovering that it was “directly subsidizing a competitive product.”
Read more: Stream Finance halts withdrawals after $93M loss, xUSD depegs 75%
The Core Foundation highlights Maple’s explosive growth from less than $500 million to $2.8 billion today.
It claims that the “early traction clearly demonstrated… clear product-market fit… and appears to have been the catalyst for Maple to pivot to a competing product.”
Core’s Rich Rines warns Maple lenders not to accept a haircut without first seeking legal advice. He says the funds were required to be held in a “bankruptcy-remote structure” and that Core is “not responsible for Maple defaulting on any of its obligations to lenders.”
Maple stays guarded
Maple Finance has responded to the accusations, in which it “denies any allegations of wrongdoing on its part.” The brief post reassures its wider user base that “the dispute is strictly limited to the [BTC yield] pilot program.” Maple also accuses Core of acting “directly against lender interests.”
The post does not, however, address any of the specific claims made by the Core Foundation.
Meanwhile, the bitcoin yield section of Maple Finance’s website has been removed.
Where’s the shortfall?
Some observers suspect that the yield promised via lstBTC came directly from CORE token inflation. This could suggest the impairment potentially facing Maple depositors is to cover the gap since Core suspended price protection payments.
The CORE token has been on a steady downward trend since lstBTC was launched early this year and one user suggests this unsustainability as a potential driver for Core’s legal action.
‘Hybrid DeFi’ brings new risks
Piotr Saczuk, founder of stablecoin watchdog Stablewatch, notes the importance of “human management risk” in decentralized finance (DeFi).
In a sector known for autonomous protocols replacing traditional middlemen, buggy code often poses a greater risk than mismanagement. Millions are routinely lost to miniscule errors in a single line of smart contract code.
However, as DeFi integrates further into external capital sources, the risk landscape shifts. Saczuk warns that “in hybrid DeFi, you are underwriting the team and legal structure as much as the code.”
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