Pencil Finance completes first fully on-chain student loan cycle with $1M for 6,600 students

Pencil Finance completes the first fully on-chain student loan cycle, deploying $1 million to support over 6,600 students across 118 schools in Southeast Asia. Funded in July 2025 by Animoca Brands, Open Campus, and NewCampus, the structured loan bundle targeted underserved demographics, including 93% lower-income households and 52% first-time credit users. Deployed via ErudiFi, the successful repayment cycle demonstrates the viability of transparent, blockchain-based real-world asset lending.

Pencil Finance loan cycle completion

• ▪Pencil Finance completed a $1 million student-loan financing cycle where capital moved from funders to borrowers and back entirely on-chain.
• ▪Pencil Finance claims its $1 million student-loan cycle is the first-ever fully on-chain lending cycle financing student loans transparently recorded on the blockchain.

Southeast Asia student financing

• ▪The Pencil Finance student-loan cycle helped more than 6,600 students across 118 schools and universities in Southeast Asia, including the Philippines and Indonesia.
• ▪Out of the 6,600 students helped by the Pencil Finance cycle, approximately 1,050 students received direct funding.
• ▪Pencil Finance deployed the $1 million in capital through education financing provider ErudiFi over a 12-month period.

Blockchain-based RWA lending

• ▪Pencil Finance stated that recording the entire student loan cycle on the blockchain provides investors with a transparent, auditable record of loan performance.
• ▪In July 2026, Brazil's B3 stock exchange issued a 100,000 Brazilian reais loan secured by 10 tokenized cows as collateral, demonstrating another application of tokenized real-world assets.

Underserved borrower demographics

• ▪The Pencil Finance student-loan bundle targeted borrowers underserved by traditional lenders, with 50% of the portfolio being female and 93% from lower-income households.
• ▪Fifty-two percent of the students receiving funding through the Pencil Finance and ErudiFi loan cycle were accessing formal credit for the first time.

Animoca Brands tranche funding

• ▪The student-loan bundle was structured into a senior tranche offering fixed returns and a junior tranche offering variable returns and first-loss exposure.
• ▪The $1 million student-loan bundle was funded in July 2025 by Animoca Brands, Open Campus, and NewCampus.

2 sources