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About LendFriend

Transforming Farcaster's social graph into a credit network—one community loan at a time.

Why We Exist

Traditional lending excludes billions of people who lack credit history, collateral, or access to banks. DeFi overcollateralization defeats the purpose of credit expansion. We're building a third path: reputation-backed lending that starts with trust and evolves to scale.

LendFriend proves that your network is your credit history, your reputation is your collateral, and your community is your underwriter. We start with pure altruism at 0% interest to gather behavioral data, then scale sustainably with algorithmic hybrid underwriting at socially-appropriate rates.

"Perhaps the largest financial value built directly on reputation is credit and uncollateralized lending. Currently, the Web 3 ecosystem cannot replicate even the most primitive forms of uncollateralized lending..."

— Vitalik Buterin & E. Glen Weyl, Decentralized Society: Finding Web3's Soul (2022)

How LendFriend Works

1

Request a Loan

Borrowers create loan requests with their funding goal, repayment terms, and business story. Your Farcaster identity and on-chain history serve as your reputation.

2

Community Funding

Friends and community members contribute USDC to support your loan. High-reputation lenders implicitly vouch for borrowers by funding them. All on Base L2 for low gas costs.

3

Transparent Repayment

Borrowers repay on a fixed monthly schedule. All payments are on-chain and visible to the community. Lenders can claim their share as repayments come in.

Multi-Signal Reputation

We verify identity and assess trust using multiple reputation signals:

  • • Farcaster Identity: Persistent FID with social history
  • • Neynar Score: Spam detection (0-1 scale)
  • • OpenRank: EigenTrust-based social graph reputation
  • • Gitcoin Passport: Humanity verification
  • • Wallet Activity: On-chain transaction history
  • • Lender Vouching: High-reputation lenders endorsing borrowers

Our Evolution: From Social Trust to Scale

Version 1.0

Social Underwriting at 0% Interest

Q4 2025 - Q1 2026 • Bootstrap Phase

What We're Building Now

Pure community-driven lending with zero interest. This is intentionally altruistic to bootstrap trust, gather clean repayment data, and map social capital on Farcaster.

Trust Signals
  • ✓ Farcaster identity & social history
  • ✓ Multi-protocol reputation scores
  • ✓ Wallet on-chain activity
  • ✓ Implicit lender vouching
Cash Flow Proxies
  • ✓ Cast frequency & engagement
  • ✓ Network growth patterns
  • ✓ Mutual connections strength
  • ✓ Social activity consistency
Loan Size Limits

Research shows social signals alone reliably support loans up to ~$6,000 average. v1 focuses on $100-$5,000 loans to build trust while staying within proven bounds.

Success Metrics
  • • Bootstrap 500-1,000 Farcaster users
  • • Gather 3-6 months of repayment behavior data
  • • Map trust networks and reputation correlations
  • • Prove the zero-interest primitive works
Version 2.0

Hybrid Underwriting with Low Interest

Q2 2026+ • Scale Phase

The Evolution to Scale

Layer in verified cash flow data to enable larger loans ($10k-$25k+) with socially-appropriate interest (0-5% monthly) vs predatory rates (10-30%). Automate underwriting using hybrid social + financial models proven in research.

Additional Data Sources
  • ✓ Bank account cash flow (Plaid)
  • ✓ On-chain revenue streams
  • ✓ Creator platform earnings
  • ✓ Merchant payment histories
  • ✓ Staking/vouching deposits
Automation Capabilities
  • ✓ Auto-approval for loans <$10k
  • ✓ Dynamic risk pricing (0-5%)
  • ✓ Revenue-based repayment (RBF)
  • ✓ Continuous model learning
  • ✓ Multi-protocol identity
Research-Backed Approach

We're following the proven path of Prosper, Branch, and Tala: start with social proof, gather behavioral data, then layer in cash flow signals for algorithmic scaling.

Studies show hybrid social + cash flow models achieve AUC ≈ 0.72-0.80 vs 0.65 for social alone, enabling larger loans while maintaining low default rates.

Expanded Use Cases
  • • Friends & Family: $100-$1,000 at 0%
  • • Creators & Freelancers: $1,000-$10,000 at 0-3%
  • • Small Businesses: $5,000-$25,000 at 3-5%
  • • Merchants: Revenue-based repayment structures

Built on Research, Not Guesswork

Our two-phase approach isn't experimental—it's proven by decades of fintech evolution:

Platform Evolution

  • Prosper (2006): Started with social networks and auctions, evolved to algorithmic pricing by 2010. Now 8.99-35.99% APR.
  • Branch: Founded by Kiva's co-founder, evolved from group lending to ML models using 2,000+ mobile data points.
  • Tala: Mobile signals → causal inference ML. Doubled approval rates (40%→80%) while reducing defaults. $300M revenue, 9M users.

Academic Evidence

  • Karlan (2007): Group lending reduced defaults by 7 percentage points.
  • Field & Pande (2008): Monthly installments = same default rate as weekly, 51% less borrower stress.
  • FinRegLab (2023): Bank cash flow data achieved AUC ≈ 0.80, hybrid models 0.72-0.80.
  • Upstart (2022): Alternative data + ML increased approvals 27% without increasing defaults.

Every successful fintech lender followed this path. LendFriend is doing the same—but on-chain, transparent, and community-governed.

Who LendFriend Serves

For Borrowers

  • ✓ Underbanked or credit-invisible individuals
  • ✓ Small business owners needing working capital
  • ✓ Creators and freelancers with irregular income
  • ✓ Anyone with strong social capital but no collateral
  • ✓ Farcaster community members who need support

For Lenders

  • ✓ Community members who want to support friends
  • ✓ Impact investors seeking social returns (v1)
  • ✓ Yield seekers looking for fair returns (v2: 0-5%)
  • ✓ Anyone who believes in reputation-backed credit
  • ✓ DeFi users wanting productive capital use

What Makes LendFriend Different

🔍 Transparent by Default

All loans, repayments, and reputation scores are on-chain and publicly verifiable. No black-box algorithms.

🤝 Community-First

Borrowers and lenders are real people in the Farcaster community, not anonymous wallets. Reputation matters.

📊 Data-Driven Evolution

We're not guessing—we're following proven fintech research and gathering real behavioral data to scale responsibly.

⚡ Low-Cost Infrastructure

Built on Base L2 with USDC settlement. Gas costs are negligible (~$0.01-0.10 per transaction), not a barrier.

🔐 Self-Custodial

Smart contracts handle funds automatically. No intermediaries, no custodians, no counterparty risk.

🌱 Bootstrap to Scale

Start altruistic (0%), gather data, evolve to sustainable (0-5%). Not extractive, not predatory—just fair.

The Vision

A world where your reputation is your collateral, your network is your credit history, and your community is your underwriter.

We're building the infrastructure for reputation-backed credit that starts with pure trust and evolves to algorithmic scale—transparent, on-chain, and community-governed.

Phase 1: Bootstrap at 0%. Phase 2: Scale with algorithms.

Join the Movement

We're just getting started. Help us prove that reputation-backed credit works.

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LendFriend

Reputation-backed credit on Farcaster. Start with 0% interest, scale with algorithms.

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Open source • Transparent • Community-governed