Pencil Finance, a decentralized lending protocol on the education-focused EDU Chain, said it completed what it describes as the first student-loan cycle executed entirely on blockchain rails. The $1 million lending bundle, funded by Animoca Brands, Open Campus and NewCampus in July 2025, was issued and serviced by education-financing firm ErudiFi. Pencil Finance packaged the loans as an on-chain private-credit investment, allowing funders to track performance through blockchain records as capital moved from deployment through repayment and was returned with yield. Over 12 months, the financing supported more than 6,600 students at 118 institutions across Southeast Asia, primarily Indonesia and the Philippines, including about 1,050 borrowers funded directly through the bundle. The capital was divided between a senior tranche with fixed returns and repayment priority and a junior tranche with variable returns that absorbed first losses from defaults. Pencil Finance operates on EDU Chain, an Ethereum-based network built using Arbitrum Orbit and co-incubated by Animoca Brands and HackQuest. Across ErudiFi’s portfolio, 93% of borrowers come from lower-income households, 52% are using formal credit for the first time, half are women and 90% reported improved quality of life after receiving financing. The companies did not disclose borrower interest rates, default figures or the specific investor returns. The first-cycle claim could not be independently verified, and the model still depends on off-chain borrower origination and local disbursement. Even so, the completed deployment, servicing and repayment cycle offers a proof of concept for using blockchain records to make emerging-market education lending more auditable and accessible to global capital.