In merchant credit, the scarce asset is not capital. It is information velocity and cash-flow control. A merchant doing $10M of annual GMV on a 14-day payout cycle can have roughly $380K of gross sales economically earned but not yet settled at any given time. The real underwriting work is separating that headline GMV into what is actually financeable: refunds, chargebacks, platform reserves, fees, inventory turns and cohort-level repayment behavior.
Dow Protocol's underlying asset servicer is designed around that borrowing base moving in real time. Risk data continuously informs credit capacity, repayment is tied to the merchant’s actual cash-flow path, and on-chain settlement removes another layer of timing friction once capital is approved. Blockchain makes working capital credit behave more like a live market than a monthly spreadsheet.