Author: WOO X Research
Background: Stablecoins have become a battleground
Cryptocurrencies have always given the impression of high volatility and easy token surges and crashes, seemingly having little to do with "stability". Stablecoins, on the other hand, are mostly pegged to the US dollar, and can not only be used as chips to exchange for other tokens, but also serve payment functions. The total market capitalization of this sector exceeds $200 billion, making it a relatively mature segment of the crypto market.
However, the most common USDT and USDC on the market are both issued by centralized institutions, and their combined market share is close to 90%. Other projects also want to grab a slice of this big 'BTC'. For example, the Web 2.0 payment giant PayPal is launching its own stablecoin pyUSD in 2023 to stake a claim; recently, the parent company of XRP, Ripple, has also issued RLUSD in an attempt to challenge the stablecoin market.
The above two cases are more about the payment business use of stablecoins, with the backing mostly being US dollars or short-term government bonds, while decentralized stablecoins emphasize more on yield, anchoring mechanism, and composability with DeFi.
The market's desire for decentralized stablecoins has never diminished. From DAI to UST, from the types of collateral to the anchoring mechanism, the development of decentralized stablecoins has gone through several iterations. Ethena pioneered the use of spot-futures arbitrage + staking to generate yield with USDe, opening up users' imagination for yield-bearing stablecoins. The market cap of USDe has reached $5.9 billion, ranking third in the entire market. Recently, Ethena has partnered with BlackRock to launch USDtb, a stablecoin backed by real-world assets (RWA) that can provide stable income regardless of bull or bear markets, rounding out its product line and making Ethena a focus of market attention.
Given the success of Ethena, the market has also seen more and more yield-bearing stablecoin related protocols emerge, such as: Usual, which recently announced a partnership with Ethena; Anzen, built in the Base ecosystem; and Resolv, which uses ETH as collateral. What are the anchoring mechanisms of these three protocols? Where do the yields come from? Let's take a look with WOO X Research.
Source: Ethena Labs
USUAL: Strong team background, token design has Ponzi-like attributes
USUAL is an RWA yield-bearing stablecoin, with short-term government bonds as the underlying yield-generating assets. The stablecoin is USD0, and by staking USD0, users can obtain USD0++, with $USUAL as the staking reward. They believe that current stablecoin issuers are too centralized, like traditional banks, and rarely distribute value to users. USUAL will make users co-owners of the project, with 90% of the value generated returned to users.
In terms of the project team background, CEO Pierre Person was a member of the French National Assembly and a political advisor to French President Emmanuel Macron. The Asia-Pacific executive Yoko was the fundraising manager for the French presidential election. The project has strong French political and business connections, and the support of regulators and the government is crucial to the success of the RWA model.
Regarding the project mechanism, USUAL's token economics have Ponzi-like attributes. It is not just a mining token with a fixed issuance, but the issuance of USUAL is tied to the TVL of USD0 (USD0++), following an inflationary model. However, the issuance will vary based on the "revenue growth" of the protocol, strictly ensuring the inflation rate.
Whenever new USD0++ bond tokens are minted, a corresponding proportion of $USUAL will be generated and distributed to the participants. The Minting Rate starts at the highest level at TGE and follows a gradually declining exponential curve, with the aim of rewarding early participants and creating token scarcity to drive up the intrinsic value of the token.
In simple terms, the higher the TVL, the less USUAL will be issued, and the higher the value of a single USUAL token.
Higher USUAL price -> Incentivize staking USD0 -> Increase TVL -> Reduce USUAL issuance -> Increase USUAL price
The market cap of USD0 has increased by 66% in the past week, reaching $1.4 billion, surpassing PyUSD. The APY of USD0++ is also as high as 50%.
Recently, Usual has also partnered with Ethena, accepting USDtb as collateral, and will subsequently migrate part of the reserve assets of the stablecoin USD0 to USDtb. In the coming months, Usual will become one of the largest minters and holders of USDtb.
As part of this collaboration, Usual will set up a sUSDe vault for USD0++ bond holders, allowing Usual users to earn sUSDe rewards while maintaining their core exposure to Usual. This will allow Usual users to leverage Ethena's rewards while increasing Ethena's TVL. Finally, Usual will incentivize and enable the swapping of USDtb-USD0 and USDtb-sUSDe, increasing the liquidity between core assets.
They have also recently opened USUAL staking, with the rewards sourced from 10% of the total USUAL supply, currently offering an APY of up to 730%.
USUAL:
- Current price: $1.04
- Market cap rank: 197
- Circulating market cap: $488,979,186
- TVL: $1,404,764,184
- TVL/MC: 2,865
Source: usual.money
Anzen: Securitization of credit assets
Anzen's issued stablecoin is USDz, currently supported on five chains: ETH, ARB, MANTA, BASE, and BLAST. The underlying assets are a portfolio of private credit assets, and by staking USDz, users can obtain sUSDz and earn RWA yields.
The underlying assets are in collaboration with the licensed US broker-dealer Percent, with the risk exposure mainly in the US market. The single asset exposure does not exceed 15%, and the investment portfolio is diversified across 6-7 assets, with a current APY of around 10%.
The partners are also well-known in traditional finance, including BlackRock, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Moody's Ratings, and UBS.
Source: Anzen
In terms of financing, Anzen raised $4 million in seed funding from Mechanism Capital, Circle Ventures, Frax, Arca, Infinity Ventures, Cherubic Ventures, Palm Drive Ventures, M31 Capital, and Kraynos Capital. They used Fjord to raise $3 million in a public offering.
In the ANZ token design, a ve model is used, where ANZ can be locked and staked to obtain veANZ, which entitles the holder to a share of the protocol's revenue.
Source: Anzen
ANZ:
- Current price: $0.02548
- Market cap rank: 1,277
- Circulating market cap: $21,679,860
- TVL: $94,720,000
- TVL/MC: 4,369
Resolv: Delta-neutral stablecoin protocol
Resolv has two products, USR and RPL,
- USR: A stablecoin minted by over-collateralized ETH, with RPL providing price peg support. Users can stake USR to earn stUSR and receive rewards.
- RLP: USR has over 100% collateral, with the excess used to back RLP. RLP is not a stablecoin, and the collateral required to mint or redeem RLP tokens is based on the latest RLP price.
The ETH used to generate USR is held by Resolv, which uses a delta-neutral strategy, with most of the collateral directly deposited and staked on-chain. A portion of the collateral is held by institutions as futures margin.
100% of the on-chain collateral is deposited in Lido. The short collateral margin is between 20% and 30%, which is 3.3 to 5 times leveraged. 47% is on Binance, 21% on Deribit, and 31.3% on Hyperliquid (using Ceffu and Fireblocks as CEX custodians).
Sources of revenue: on-chain staking and funding rates.
Base rewards (70%): stUSR + RLP holders.
Risk premium (30%): RLP.
Assuming the collateral pool generates $20,000 in profit:
- The base reward calculation is $20,000 * 70% = $14,000, distributed proportionally to stUSR and RLP TVL.
- The risk premium calculation is $20,000 * 30% = $6,000, distributed to RLP.
Therefore, RLP receives a larger share of the profits, but if the funding rate is negative, the loss will be deducted from the RLP pool, making RLP riskier.
Recently, Resolv launched on the Base network and introduced a rewards program, where holding USR or RLP can earn points, laying the groundwork for future token launches.
Relevant data:
- stUSR: 12.53%
- RLP: 21.7%
- TVL: $183M
- Collateralization ratio: 126%
