According to CoinDesk, a tokenized loan worth $20 million has soured in a lending pool on decentralized lending platform Goldfinch after borrower Stratos' bets on a real-estate tech company and digital asset investments did not perform as expected, according to pool manager Warbler Labs. In a protocol governance forum post on Saturday, Warbler Labs disclosed that $7 million of the funds are now at risk of loss.

The distressed pool made a four-year loan of $20 million worth of USDC stablecoins with an 11% annual interest rate to fintech credit fund Stratos in February 2022, with Warbler Labs as the underwriter. Stratos allocated $5 million of the funds to REZI, a real-estate tech firm focusing on apartment rentals in major U.S. cities, which has now stopped paying and is expected to write down the position to zero. Another $2 million of the funds, dedicated to something called POKT, was allocated to digital asset investments that Warbler Labs said it was not aware of at the time of the investment. Stratos sold this position at a near full loss and added loan collateral to cover the shortfall.

Warbler Labs has stated that it will backstop all losses to investors in the pool. The remaining $13 million was allocated to e-commerce marketplace management startup Threecolts, which is performing strongly. The soured loan highlights the risks of tokenized real-world assets (RWA) such as private credit and brings under scrutiny the due diligence process performed on blockchain-based RWA lending protocols, especially after last year's string of defaulted loans to crypto trading firms. This development follows another credit event of a Goldfinch pool earlier this year, when African robotaxi financing company Tugende defaulted on a $5 million loan set to mature in October.