From pools to crowd loans: how Unlloo works today.

Update, 21 October 2026. Unlloo is now live on Ethereum mainnet and open to everyone, with loans in USDC, USDT and DAI. This post was first written for the testnet and has been updated to describe mainnet.

TL;DR. Unlloo first described one shared lending pool, with borrowers approved by an admin and a rate set by a utilization curve. Today Unlloo runs crowd loans: each lender picks the borrower and names their own rate, the borrower picks which offers to accept, and each loan is isolated from every other. There is no collateral today, and optional collateral is planned. The reputation score does not yet use Unlloo repayment history. Unlloo runs on Ethereum mainnet, with loans in USDC, USDT or DAI.

This article is general education, not financial, legal or tax advice. Unlloo runs on Ethereum mainnet with real money: read the risks before you lend.

How did Unlloo first work?

Unlloo first worked as one shared lending pool with admin-approved borrowers, as described in our first Field Notes post. Lenders deposited stablecoins into that pool and shared its interest pro rata, in proportion to what each had supplied.

Borrowers in the first design were pre-vetted, and a human underwriter made the final call on each new borrower before an admin approved them. The interest rate came from a utilization curve: the larger the share of the pool that was borrowed, the higher the rate. There was no collateral and no liquidation, and a borrower could repay early and pay interest only for the time they held the loan.

How does Unlloo work today?

Unlloo today runs crowd loans: one loan funded by many independent lenders, each of whom chooses the borrower and names their own rate. There is no shared pool. Every offer is made to one specific loan and is held by the smart contract against that loan until the rules below release it.

The request. A borrower creates a request with an amount, a maximum APR (annual percentage rate), a funding window and a repayment window. The borrower also picks the token, USDC, USDT or DAI, and the whole loan stays in it. The admin sets the allowed ranges for new loans, for the loan size, the maximum APR (never above 50%) and the funding and repayment windows, and each loan records the settings it was created with. The repayment window is counted from the end of the selection window.

The offers. Lenders fund a request by making offers, each with an amount and a rate anywhere from 0 up to the borrower's maximum APR. Each offer must meet a minimum size, and a loan takes at most 200 offers, a cap fixed in the contract. That limit counts offers, not lenders, and one lender can make several. Offers are locked while the funding window is open.

The 80% rule. When the funding window closes, a request whose offers total less than 80% of the amount asked expires, and every lender can withdraw their full offer. If offers reach 80% or more, the borrower gets a selection window, currently 7 days, to accept any offers and any part of each, as long as the accepted total is at least 80% of the request. The contract does not fill offers in rate order; the borrower chooses. If the borrower accepts nothing before the selection window ends, the request expires.

The loan. Accepted funds go to the borrower, and interest starts at that moment. Interest is simple: it accrues every second on the outstanding principal, at each lender's own rate on their accepted share, over a 365-day year, and it is never added to principal.

Repayment. The borrower can repay any amount at any time, with no early repayment penalty, and pays only the interest accrued so far. Each repayment pays interest first, then principal, and anyone can repay on the borrower's behalf. Lenders claim their share of each repayment from the contract; nothing arrives in a lender's wallet until they claim it.

After the deadline. If the loan is not fully repaid by the deadline, anyone can mark it as not repaid in time. Interest keeps accruing at the same rates, the borrower can still repay, and there is no late fee beyond that interest.

Why did Unlloo move from a pool to crowd loans?

Unlloo moved from a pool to crowd loans so that the people taking the risk make the credit decision. In a pool, a lender accepts one blended rate and a share of every borrower; in a crowd loan, each lender decides who to fund, how much and at what rate.

Lenders choose. A lender who knows a borrower, or who has read their reputation score and wallet history, can price that one loan. A lender who does not like a request can simply skip it.

Each loan is isolated. A default lands only on the lenders who funded that loan, not on everyone who supplied a pool. Isolation limits who is affected by a default; it does not make a default less likely, or smaller for the lenders on that loan.

Borrowers bring their own network. The people who already know a borrower, and are willing to fund them, can do so directly on that borrower's request. A pool cannot use that trust, because a pool lender never picks a borrower.

No approval gate. No admin decides who may ask for a loan. Any wallet can create a request, and the decision moves to the lenders, who choose whether to fund it.

The trade-off is effort: a pool asks nothing of its lenders, and a crowd loan asks each lender to judge a borrower.

What is still true from the first design?

Three things carry over from the first design: there is no collateral, early repayment carries no penalty, and reputation is the main signal lenders read.

• No collateral. The contract holds no borrower collateral, and nothing in it locks, seizes or liquidates a borrower's assets.
• Early repayment. Borrowers still repay early with no penalty, pay interest only for the time they held the money, and partial repayments still go to interest first.
• Reputation. Each borrower has a 0 to 1000 on-chain reputation score built from multi-chain wallet history plus third-party services.

The reputation score has two parts. 60% is a weighted average of third-party scores from Ethos Network, Human Passport, Webacy, Talent Protocol, growthepie and Zeru zPass, re-weighted across whichever services return data for the wallet. The other 40% is Unlloo's own creditworthiness score, built from Blockscout wallet history on Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, Avalanche and Optimism over the last 48 months. If only one part has data, that part counts in full.

A wallet younger than 12 months gets 0 for the Unlloo part, so it can score only through third-party services, and a wallet with no data from any source scores 0. How the score is built goes deeper.

What is not built yet?

Optional collateral is not built yet: it is planned, and today no loan has collateral behind it. Several other things a reader might assume are also not in place.

• Unlloo repayment history in the score. The reputation score does not yet use Unlloo repayment or default history, so repaying an Unlloo loan does not raise a score today.
• Reputation checks in the contract. The contract does not check reputation, so any wallet can create a loan. Unlloo's service takes a snapshot of the borrower's score after the request is created and shows it to lenders as information. Any suggested loan limits are advisory and not enforced by the contract.

What should a lender know before funding a loan?

A lender should know when money can leave, that every payout has to be claimed, and that a lender recovers only what the borrower repays.

When you can withdraw. An offer is locked while the funding window is open. If offers reach 80% of the request, it stays locked during the selection window too. After a request expires or is cancelled, you can withdraw your full offer. After the borrower accepts offers, you can withdraw any part of your offer that was not accepted, which is the whole offer if yours was not selected; unaccepted money earns no interest.

Nothing is pushed to you. Refunds and repayments are pulled, never pushed. You call withdraw to take back a refundable offer, and claim to collect your share of each repayment.

If the borrower does not repay. A lender recovers only what the borrower repays. Nothing is seized, and the contract has no recovery mechanism.

Cancellation. A borrower can cancel a request only before accepting offers, and an admin can cancel a request that is still funding. Neither moves tokens; lenders then withdraw their offers themselves. Once offers are accepted, nobody can cancel the loan.

Custody and admin powers. Funds are held by the smart contract, not by Unlloo, and only the contract's rules move them. The contract does have admin powers, listed on the security page. An admin can pause new loans, new offers and acceptances, but a pause never blocks repayments, claims or refunds. An admin can also upgrade the contract logic, including the logic that holds funds, after a public 3-day timelock.

Fees. The protocol fee is 10% of the interest each repayment pays (the contract allows at most 25%), and never comes out of principal; and it is fixed into each loan when the loan is created. A fee change goes through a 3-day timelock and never affects existing loans.

For the wider picture, read is it safe to lend crypto and what happens if a loan is not repaid.

Is Unlloo live with real money?

Yes. Unlloo is live on Ethereum mainnet and open to everyone. Each loan is in USDC, USDT or DAI, picked by the borrower, and the money is real: a lender can lose what they lend, because nothing secures the loan.

Before you fund a loan, read the risks and what the contract's admin can and cannot do.