Earlier this year, Gold Car Rent, a business vehicle rental company in Dubai, sought growth capital to expand its fleet and meet the rising demand from long-term business customers.
Instead of traditional bank loans, the company opted to raise capital through 8lends, a Web3-based crowdfunding platform that connects global investors with business loans from the real economy.
The financing was secured with collateral, namely a fleet of Mercedes-Benz Vito vans from Gold Car Rent. These vehicles were appraised and used as security for the loan.
The borrowed capital was released in stages, with each tranche being disbursed after the necessary documents and invoices were verified. The repayments come from the revenues of long-term B2B rental contracts.
With this setup, investors can see that the returns are linked to the performance of the company and not to a complicated return structure. For the company, this approach meant access to global funding without compromising on strict acceptance requirements.
The story of Gold Car Rent shows what is slowly changing in the DeFi yield segment thanks to peer-to-peer (P2P) lending mechanisms. To discover more about this, BeInCrypto recently spoke with Aleksander Lang, CFO & co-founder of Maclear – the company behind 8lends.
We explored why investors are increasingly opting for crowdfunding with stable income, how platforms like 8lends are adapting institutional credit practices to Web3 infrastructure, and whether this model can become a sustainable source of passive income for crypto investors.
Two models, two risk profiles
Peer-to-peer lending or crowdfunding has existed longer than crypto and DeFi. Marketplace lending platforms have been connecting investors with small businesses that traditional banks do not want to engage with for years. The idea was simple: achieve a fixed return by financing real economic activity.
But the model also has downsides. Because many P2P platforms allow loans for parties that do not meet bank standards, the risk of default can be higher than with traditional loans. Credit losses primarily depend on acceptance standards, the setup of the loan, and the collection process of the platform, as well as the business performance of the borrower.
At the same time, many traditional P2P platforms are limited by national borders, restricting both investors and diversification across borders. Risk management and enforcement thus depend on local legislation.
Decentralized finance (DeFi) approached the same problem in a different way. DeFi lending protocols allow users to borrow and lend cryptocurrencies via smart contracts, often with overcollateralization and automatic liquidations to mitigate default risks.
By removing intermediaries and national borders, DeFi has greatly increased access to the lending market and introduced new forms of capital efficiency.
In the early days of DeFi yield, the difference between lending income and returns from incentives sometimes blurred. Some protocols supplemented natural lending yields with token payouts or relied on optimistic assumptions regarding liquidity and collateral stability.
Anchor Protocol on Terra was the best-known example of this. In its heyday, it offered about 20% APY on UST deposits by combining lending activities with subsidized rewards. When the underlying stablecoin failed in 2022, the whole system collapsed.
Why investors reconsider returns after the DeFi hype and crash
The downfall of Terra prompted the sector to reevaluate how 'sustainable' returns are generated. Lang also saw this change occurring among investors. While confidence in high yields faded, users remained positive about crypto.
“People still loved crypto and the benefits such as convenience, speed, and global access. But after seeing many high-yield projects collapse, their mentality changed. If you see a platform offering 20% 'risk-free' that suddenly collapses, or if a major service suddenly stops withdrawals, that is a significant shock.
Users thus no longer chased the highest APY but looked for products that rely on real business activities. They wanted to know clearly where the money comes from, who the borrower is, and how the return is achieved. Real cash flows, no empty slogans or inflated marketing,” Lang states.
According to Lang, Web3 crowdfunding sits exactly between those two worlds. Instead of reinventing returns, existing lending structures are applied and blockchain technology is utilized for better access, openness, and verifiability across borders.
“This allows you to stay in the crypto world, with something predictable and understandable, based on real performance rather than promises,” he told BeInCrypto.
Bringing credit discipline on-chain
Lang then explained how 8lends combines elements from DeFi and traditional crowdfunding in its operations. The platform emerged from a team with extensive experience in Swiss P2P lending through Maclear, but was consciously not set up as an extension of a Web2 platform.
Instead, consideration was given to how the credit process should look and be presented in a decentralized environment, taking into account different expectations from investors from both worlds. He said:
“In the traditional lending sector, people rely on oversight and reputation, but on-chain users primarily want clarity. They want to know how decisions are made. So we made the core of our process more visible: what type of information we analyze, how we assess borrowers, and how we monitor risks.”
Lang also noted that Web3 users are used to being kept informed directly. They want to follow ongoing developments step by step, rather than just seeing the end result afterward. That’s why 8lends has changed the presentation of information so that investors can clearly and quickly follow the progress without compromising on diligence in credit assessment.
Consistency was, according to him, the last requirement. Lang states that Maclear has built a strong reputation through strict procedures, repeatable checks, financial analyses, and constant oversight. He added:
“To bring that level of structured business operations to the blockchain, we had to standardize how information is displayed and verified, so that users can view the underlying logic themselves.”
For the company, this is where the added value of blockchain lies: cash flows, repayments, and performance are directly visible. Smart contracts enforce the same rules everywhere and reduce operational risk. At the same time, the system remains globally accessible, while maintaining strict credit assessments.
Proof of Loan: how 8LNDS supports participation without replacing yield
In addition to using blockchain infrastructure to improve transparency and access, 8lends also introduced 8LNDS, a native token that supports participation within the platform's Web3 crowdfunding ecosystem. Unlike many DeFi-native tokens, 8LNDS is designed to encourage engagement and long-term participation rather than changing the economics of the lending product itself.
The loan interest on 8lends remains fixed, backed by assets and linked to the performance of the borrower. The token operates alongside this structure and supports rewards, loyalty programs, and additional benefits for active lenders – both for traditional and Web3-native users.
“It was not launched through a public sale or by quickly seeking liquidity. Instead, it started as an earn-only token, where the distribution was directly linked to activity on the platform,” Timoshkin explained.
8LNDS is distributed through participation on the platform via 8lends’ Proof of Loan mechanism, which becomes visible when users fund real business loans. In this structure, the distribution of the token reflects actual lending activity, while the return for investors comes solely from repayments made by the active companies.
What Web3 crowdfunding must prove
At the end of the conversation, Lang described the characteristics that Web3 crowdfunding needs to reach mainstream adoption, according to him. Transparency about borrowers and loan conditions, clear and understandable risk assessment, and returns that come from real repayments rather than bonuses were, in his opinion, the most important.
He also emphasized the importance of honesty around liquidity. Fixed-term loans must behave like fixed-term investments and not be presented as products with immediate payout.
“If this sector wants to grow, it must rely on real fundamentals, not on marketing about high returns. Only then can a stable income model withstand in a market that already knows what happens when transparency is optional.”
For Lang, the clearest success comes when investors start to behave differently – not by growth in numbers, but by making different choices. If crypto investors see business loans as a normal part of their portfolio and assess them based on creditworthiness rather than just on return, that means Web3 crowdfunding has matured.
“And it doesn’t take much to see that change. If even 5% to 10% of the average Web3 portfolio goes to real-world loans, that already indicates that crowdfunding is no longer just a niche idea, but really a normal option for passive income,” he noted.