Original | Odaily Planet Daily
Author | Azuma
Altcoin trading is really difficult, Altcoins keep falling, PVP keeps losing, rather than continuing to be obsessed, it's better to turn back.
With the difficulty of market operations rising sharply, more and more users are starting to turn their attention to more controllable money-making opportunities. In response to this demand, Odaily Planet Daily has decided to launch the "A Lazier's Guide to U-Pegged Finance", this column will cover the relatively low-risk (systemic risk can never be eliminated) yield strategies based on stablecoins (and their derivative tokens) in the current market, aiming to help those users who hope to gradually expand their capital scale through U-pegged finance to find more ideal income opportunities.
This column is tentatively updated weekly, and if reader feedback is high, related strategies for BTC, ETH, and SOL will also be released in the future.
Let me share a "hot" knowledge, in the past 20 years (from October 15, 2004 to October 14, 2024), the average annual return of the "Oracle" Warren Buffett is about 10.96%, while in the cryptocurrency market where financial systemization and structurization are still in the early stage, every ordinary person can "easily" surpass this figure.
Basic Yield (Lowest Efficiency)
The so-called basic yield temporarily covers the single-token finance schemes of mainstream CEXs, as well as the on-chain lending, DEX LP, and RWA deposit schemes of mainstream DeFi.
CEX Side
Binance: USDT single-token finance (apy) is currently 2.7%, with an additional 5% bonus for 0-500 USDT; USDC single-token finance is currently 1.89%, with an additional 7% bonus for 0-500 USDC;
OKX: USDT single-token finance is currently 2%; USDC single-token finance is currently 2%;
Bitget: USDT single-token finance is currently 4.12%, with an additional 8% bonus for 0-500 USDT.
On-Chain
Ethereum
Aave: USDT 4.18%; USDC 4.27%; DAI 5.13%;
Fluid: USDT 9.43%; USDC 8.07%;
Ethena: sUSDe 9%;
Sky: sUSDS 8.75%;
Solana
Kamino: USDT 4.72%; USDC 6.53%; PYUSD 6.56%; USDS - USDC LP 11.24%;
margin.fi: USDT 5.69%; USDC 5.87%; PYUSD 6.41%;
Base
Aave: USDC 5.04%;
Aerodrome: USDC - USDT LP 13.88%.
Pendle Zone (Core Strategy)
To amplify the yield of stablecoins at the moment, it is basically impossible to avoid structured or leveraged products, and considering the security and liquidity situation, Pendle is undoubtedly the most suitable arena.
As shown in the figure above, the PT yields of multiple stablecoins on Pendle can reach 15% or even higher, significantly exceeding the basic yield level in the industry.
A relatively hot pool recently is the eUSDe (Ethreal's USDe deposit certificate) pool expiring on May 29, with a direct buy-in PT corresponding to an apy of 17.9%, corresponding to a yield of about 4.56% on the expiration date.
You can also choose to go to the LP (eUSDe - eUSDe PT) of this pool, the corresponding yield will drop to 7.546% (will increase to 9.09% with sufficient PENDLE staking), but you can also get an additional 1.6x Ethreal score bonus and a 50x Ethena Sats score bonus - early withdrawal will have Impermanent Loss, but holding until maturity will gradually offset this loss.
In addition, the "old-fashioned golden pool" sUSDe (Ethena, the staked USDe) is still very popular. The pool expiring on March 27 has a direct buy-in PT corresponding to an apy of 14.8% (sUSDe-based yield of 1.21% on the expiration date), and the pool expiring on May 29 has a direct buy-in PT corresponding to an apy of 13.49% (sUSDe-based yield of 3.44% on the expiration date), plus the 9% apy of sUSDe itself, the comprehensive apy can break through 20%.
Ecosystem Incentives (Opportunities and Volatility Coexist)
This part mainly covers the currently popular ecosystems, especially those that are implementing incentive programs in various forms. The common feature of these ecosystems is that the early paper yield is often extremely high, but the reward is mainly in the form of ecosystem tokens or ecosystem protocol tokens, and the final yield is linked to the token price performance.
For example, the currently popular Sonic, taking the mainstream DEX protocol Shadow in this ecosystem as an example, the apr (note that this is apr, not apy) of the USDC.e - scUSD LP on this DEX is currently 38.2%, and the apr of the USDC.e - USDT LP is as high as 57.3%.
However, the reward composition of such pools is mainly the incentives of xSHADOW and GEMS - xSHADOW needs to be locked for 6 months to be redeemed 1:1 for SHADOW; GEMS is the airdrop certificate for Sonic's future, but according to the official disclosure, the first season will end and need to wait until around June 2025. Comprehensively, although the yield figures are tempting, the realization of the incentives still has certain uncertainties.
Another interesting ecosystem is Sui. Sui has recently opened up incentive subsidies for some protocols in its ecosystem, causing a relatively rare phenomenon of borrowing cost and yield inversion in lending protocols like Scallop - the additional incentive for lending funds is greater than the borrowing cost. As shown in the figure below, without taking the staking Boost, the lending incentives of SUI, sbETH, and sbUSDC in Scallop are higher than the borrowing interest rate, which means that users can profit from both deposits and borrowings.
Blind Mining Opportunities ("Catch Two Birds with One Stone")
This part mainly focuses on projects that have not yet had a TGE but have already opened up deposit channels. Due to the uncertainty of the future reward pool (airdrop) size, the yield situation of this strategy fluctuates greatly, and it is relatively recommended to invest in those that already have a certain income-generating capacity, and can also take into account the airdrop "catch two birds with one stone" opportunity.
For example, the Ethreal mentioned earlier, the community likes to call it Ethena's "own son", and currently directly depositing USDe into Ethreal can obtain the certificate token eUSDe, but this scheme cannot generate income, and there is no score acceleration, it is more recommended for long-term deposit users (actually just three months) to transfer to Pendle LP.
Other opportunities I am currently participating in include 1) Symbiotic, mainly in the form of sUSDe, can accumulate scores while earning 9% apy; 2) Soneium just started, on the one hand hoping to earn the upcoming ASTR incentive, and on the other hand to gamble on potential airdrops; 3) I also deposited some sUSDe in Berachian through Concrete, but I am slightly regretful recently, one is that there are too many monks and not enough meat, and the other is that the withdrawal is temporarily restricted; 4) I previously put some funds in the LP pool of Perena, but the apy has been low recently and I have withdrawn; 5) others include putting some funds in Meteora to earn points, but not limited to stablecoins.
Leverage Ratio
Risks always exist in the crypto world, so eggs should never be put in the same basket (although these baskets are often on the same car...), my current stablecoin allocation plan is as follows, for reference only.
I still have about 30% in the basic yield, with some in CEX and some in popular chains like Solana, mainly for easy trading;
Pendle is currently the main battlefield, with an investment scale of around 40%, but it will be distributed in different pools, and both PT and LP will take some;
The investment in the incentivized ecology is relatively small, less than 10%, and I have some bias against the past of AC and Fantom, so I will probably not heavily participate in Sonic;
The blind mining of major projects is about 20%, and the specific investment ratio depends on the project status (basic yield rate, team background, audit status) and personal preferences.
I may adjust it again in the near future, and I will follow up on the subsequent updates.
