Teller
Teller is a decentralized lending protocol and consumer finance application that enables no-collateral and asset-backed loans, on-chain lending primitives, and a score-based pre-qualification system.[7] The protocol dates its lending activity to 2019, and the company behind it, Teller Org, Inc., was founded in 2020 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.[1][2] Its defining feature is a loan structure built on rolling checkpoints rather than price-triggered liquidations: as long as interest is paid on time and loans are rolled over by their due date, positions can continue indefinitely without a margin call.[3]
Overview
Teller operates as a non-custodial, permissionless lending protocol paired with a consumer application called Teller Pro that is built on top of it.[1][3] The protocol's core proposition is to turn a portfolio into borrowing power in one of two parallel ways: by surfacing pre-selected loan offers from a network of licensed, real-world lenders, or by letting a borrower take a protocol-native loan denominated in USDC directly against their holdings.[1]
These two routes run side by side. A no-collateral path matches borrowers to licensed lenders, while an asset-backed path lends against crypto and tokenized stocks with no margin calls.[1] The company markets a range of consumer credit categories through the interface, including personal loans, credit cards, business loans, home equity lines of credit (HELOCs), auto refinancing, asset-backed loans against Bitcoin, Ethereum and stocks, and stablecoin yield.[4] It describes its uncollateralized flow as one where a user can "Check if you pre-qualify, nothing locked up," pledging no crypto or assets and undergoing no hard credit pull before funds land in a bank account.[4]
The protocol is live across several networks. According to its documentation, Teller runs on Base, Ethereum, Arbitrum, HyperEVM, and Polygon, and is delivered through a web app, an installable iPhone and Android home-screen app (a progressive web app), a Telegram Mini App, and a Farcaster Mini App.[1]
History
Teller's mainnet went live in March 2021, launching with a design that used non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as part of its lending mechanics and opening a public alpha to NFT holders.[2] In its earlier form the company described itself as a non-custodial lending book facilitating DeFi loans on Ethereum and Polygon.[2] During 2022 the project experimented with expanding the scope of decentralized finance, including reporting on efforts to diversify into travel insurance.[2]
In December 2022 the company announced a partnership with Masa Finance to launch what it called Web3's first soulbound lending pool, under which holders of Masa Soulbound Identity tokens would be able to apply for loans through a dedicated soulbound lending pool.[2] The protocol later reoriented toward perpetual, non-liquidating credit: in August 2025 the company announced the launch of perpetual, no-liquidation loans, positioning itself as a digital asset lender.[2]
Technology and Architecture
Teller's lending logic departs from the liquidation model common to decentralized lending. Rather than tying a borrower's position to a price-triggered liquidation, loan terms are structured around rolling checkpoints; provided interest is paid on schedule, a loan can continue indefinitely, and borrowers can auto-renew loans via flash loans without repaying principal.[3] Loan terms and interest rates are negotiated by both parties through an order book, and the protocol supports single-sided liquidity pools with isolated risk, allowing lenders to deposit assets and earn interest without exposure to impermanent loss.[3] In the event of a default, collateral is disposed of through an on-chain auction.[3]
The protocol is non-custodial throughout. Teller never holds a private key; instead, an application passes the end user's wallet address and receives ordered, unsigned transactions, the user's wallet signs each one, the application posts the resulting transaction hash back to Teller, and Teller returns the next unsigned transaction. Teller does not broadcast transactions and does not take custody of funds.[1]
Early control of the Teller protocol rested with core team members and developers, with a stated intention to introduce a governance system that would decentralize ongoing control of credit-risk parameters such as market variables, approved Credit Risk Algorithms, and data providers.[8] Teller V2 smart contracts are open source and hosted in a public repository, and the codebase has undergone public security reviews, including Sherlock audits published in 2023 and 2024.[7]
Asset-Backed Loans
The asset-backed path lets borrowers take out USDC loans against assets they already hold, including major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum and tokenized stocks such as TSLA. Because the borrower retains ownership, the loan does not trigger a taxable sale and the borrower keeps any upside on the collateral.[1] Borrowers open USDC loans against supported collateral, review fixed terms such as interest rate, loan-to-value ratio, roll window, protocol fee, rollover date, and total amount due, and then confirm by signing an on-chain transaction; native ETH posted as collateral is wrapped to WETH for execution and is returned in that form on repayment.[1]
The terms a borrower reviews include the annual percentage rate (APR), the loan-to-value ratio (LTV), a 30-day roll window, a protocol fee of 0.05%, the rollover date, and the total due.[1] These loans do not use margin-call liquidation during the loan's action window; terms are fixed, so a temporary drawdown in the collateral's price does not force a sale mid-term. To keep a position open, a loan must be rolled over or repaid by its next action date—rolling over restarts the window and keeps the collateral in place—which lets borrowers hold positions across many cycles without being liquidated on a dip. If a loan is neither rolled over nor repaid by its action date, however, the full collateral can be liquidated, and Teller schedules reminders ahead of each due date.[1]
No-Collateral Lending
The uncollateralized path routes borrowers to licensed traditional-finance lenders rather than lending Teller's own funds; Teller itself is not the lender on this path.[1] It uses off-chain credit data on-chain to make uncollateralized loans possible, connecting borrowers to real lenders through a pre-qualification funnel.[3] Pre-qualification collects information about the borrower's geography, loan type and amount, employment and income, approximate credit tier, age and residency, and contact details, and uses these inputs to run eligibility checks on country and US state, age, minimum income, and loan-type intent.[1]
Loan types covered include personal loans, debt consolidation, business loans, HELOCs, mortgages and home purchase, auto purchase and refinance, and student refinancing.[1] The company emphasizes that pre-qualification does not trigger a hard credit pull, does not pledge collateral, and is explicitly not an approval—a lender approves final terms and disburses any loan directly to the borrower's bank account only after a full application. Sensitive fields such as bank details and Social Security number are not collected at pre-qualification and are not persisted within Teller.[1]
Alongside the partner-lender route, the protocol also offers a protocol-native unsecured loan: a 0% APR, 30-day USDC loan backed by the borrower's Teller Score rather than collateral.[1] This score-backed loan is gated so that the loan limit cannot exceed the wallet's Teller Score, and three checks must pass: identity verified through a completed know-your-customer (KYC) check (via Self zk-passport or an equivalent), a requested amount within the wallet's score limit, and no active Teller loan on the borrowing chain.[1]
Teller Score
The Teller Score sits on top of both borrowing paths and functions as the no-collateral borrowing limit. It ranges from 0 to 1000, and the number equals the maximum protocol-native unsecured USDC a wallet can draw—so a wallet with a score of 600 can take up to 600 USDC, subject to the KYC and active-loan checks.[1] The score is assembled from six categories that together sum to a maximum of 1000 points, four of which—Swap, Borrow, Apply, and Refer—are described in public documentation with explicit point logic:
- Swap (up to 200 points): swap volume is measured on a rolling weekly window, with every $1,000 swapped worth 1 point, so $200,000 of weekly swap volume reaches the 200-point cap.[1]
- Borrow (up to 200 points): opening collateral-backed loans is measured on a rolling monthly window, with every $1,000 borrowed worth 2 points, so $100,000 of monthly borrowing reaches the cap.[1]
- Apply (up to 200 points): completing partner programs surfaced in the matches rail—such as cards, savings products, and exchange sign-ups—reports back and credits points.[1]
- Refer (up to 200 points): sharing a referral link awards 50 points to both the referrer and the referee once a referred wallet crosses 50 points of its own organic activity.[1]
Every points-awarding action is written to an append-only ledger and displayed in a Recent Activity rail on the score page. The Swap and Borrow categories, measured on rolling weekly and monthly windows, require ongoing activity to keep their bars full.[1] The remaining categories are reserved for other activity types and are referenced in the score design but have not been described in comparable detail in public documentation.[1]
Swapping and Developer Access
Swapping inside Teller is built on the cross-chain routing infrastructure LI.FI and can bridge and trade in a single step, converting tokens across chains using the best available on-chain route. A protocol fee of 1% is applied to swap volume and funds the score program, and any confirmed swap is recorded and credits the Swap category. The company presents swapping as the fastest way to build a Teller Score, and it can also be used to obtain the token needed to repay a loan or open collateral.[1]
For developers, Teller exposes its functionality over both a REST application programming interface (API) and the Model Context Protocol (MCP), both generated from a single definition. These surfaces allow an application to read a wallet (balances, Teller Score, credit headroom, live loans and matched offers for any address), move value (swap, send, borrow, repay, roll over, deposit and withdraw, each delivered as unsigned transactions to sign), run the pre-qualify credit funnel and lender redirect, and award score points for user actions.[1] Exposing the same interface over REST and MCP allows integration into AI assistants and developer tools where partners or applications hold appropriate access keys.[1]
DEBIT Token
The protocol's native utility token is DEBIT, which is used to access platform services and the functionality of its conversational AI agent.[5] The token has a total supply and maximum supply of 100 million DEBIT.[5][6] Its contract address is 0x66661c7229901f568f16bd1551b3ba826f83ce49, and market-data providers note that the token is available on more than one chain and is listed on both centralized and decentralized exchanges.[6]
In presenting the token, CoinMarketCap describes Teller (under the DEBIT name) as an AI-powered finance platform that enables users to access both traditional credit products and on-chain financial services through a conversational AI agent, focused on no-collateral lending from licensed TradFi partners combined with on-chain actions such as swapping, bridging, borrowing, and yield generation.[5] The token was listed on Binance Alpha, with an associated airdrop that set a minimum threshold of 240 points, and it is categorized under lending and borrowing protocols and tagged as a real-world-asset project.[6][5]
Funding and Team
Teller has raised a total of approximately $7.85 million across multiple rounds. Funding databases and announcements describe a $1.0 million seed round on 16 July 2020, a $6.8 million strategic or venture round on 23 February 2022, and a non-equity assistance item dated 1 March 2026.[9][10][11][12][13] The company's roster of investors includes Framework Ventures, Blockchain Capital, ParaFi Capital, Maven 11, Signum Capital, Bessemer Ventures, Toyota Ventures, Franklin Templeton, Upstart Network, and United Overseas Bank.[9][10][12][3]
The company is privately held and classified within software development. It is led by founder and chief executive officer Ryan Berkun and chief operating officer Greg Wong, and reports a company size in the range of 11 to 50 employees.[2] Its self-reported annual revenue is $1.8 million.[2]
Developments
Teller's consumer positioning has centered on Teller Pro, a platform the company describes as matching asset-holders with lenders who offer no-collateral personal loans, aimed at people who hold Bitcoin, Ethereum, stocks, or a 401(k). In its marketing the company has advertised loan amounts of $2,500, $10,000, and $50,000, with the claims that no collateral is required and that no hard credit pull is needed to get started.[2] Through 2026, the company reiterated in social posts that more than $80 million in loans had been facilitated on the protocol, a figure consistent with the aggregate metrics shown on its website.[2][4]
Teller's later product direction has combined its lending mechanics with an AI-driven, conversational interface that lets users pre-qualify for no-collateral loans through licensed partners while carrying out on-chain financial activity—swapping, bridging, borrowing, and yield generation—through the same interface.[5]
