Author: WOO X Research

Background: Stablecoins have become a battleground.

Cryptocurrencies have traditionally been perceived as highly volatile, with tokens easily surging or plunging, seemingly having little to do with 'stability'. Stablecoins are mostly pegged to the dollar and can be used not only as chips to exchange for other tokens but also for payment operations, with the overall market cap of this sector exceeding $200 billion, making it a relatively mature segment in the crypto market.

However, the most common USDT and USDC in the market are both centralized institutions, together accounting for nearly 90% market share, and other projects also want to grab this large market. For instance, Web 2 payment giant PayPal launched its stablecoin pyUSD in 2023 to secure a position; recently, XRP's parent company Ripple also issued RLUSD in an attempt to challenge the stablecoin market.

The above two cases are more about using stablecoins for payment operations, mostly backed by dollars or short-term government bonds as collateral, while decentralized stablecoins emphasize yield, anchoring mechanisms, and composability with DeFi.

The market's desire for decentralized stablecoins has never diminished, evolving from DAI to UST, from the types of collateral behind them to the anchoring mechanisms. The development of decentralized stablecoins has gone through several iterations, with Ethena pioneering the use of futures arbitrage + staking to generate income with USDe, opening users' imaginations for interest-bearing stablecoins. The market cap of USDe stablecoin is also the third largest in the market at $5.9 billion. Recently, Ethena collaborated with BlackRock to launch USDtb, a stablecoin that generates income from RWA, which mitigates the risk of funding rates turning negative, allowing for stable yields during both bull and bear markets, completing the overall product line and making Ethena a focal point in the market.

In light of Ethena's successful case, more and more interest-bearing stablecoin-related protocols are emerging in the market, such as Usual, which recently announced cooperation with Ethena; Anzen, built on the Base ecosystem; and Resolv, which uses ETH as collateral. What are the anchoring mechanisms of these three protocols? Where does the underlying income come from? Let's take a look with WOO X Research.

Source: Ethena Labs

USUAL: Strong team background, and the token design has Ponzi attributes.

RWA interest-bearing stablecoins, backed by short-term government bonds, with USD0 as the stablecoin, and upon staking USD0, one receives USD0++ with $USUAL as the staking reward. They believe that currently, stablecoin issuers are too centralized, similar to traditional banks, seldom distributing value to users. USUAL aims to make users co-owners of the project, with 90% of the generated value returned to users.

Regarding the background of the project team, CEO Pierre Person has been a member of the French National Assembly and served as a political advisor to French President Macron. Yoko, the executive in the Asia region, was a former fundraising officer for the French presidential election. The project has good political and business relationships in France, and the most critical aspect of RWA is transferring real-world assets onto the blockchain. The support from regulators and the government is key to the project's success, and it is evident that USUAL has strong political and business relations, providing a robust moat for the project.

Returning to the project mechanism itself, the USUAL token economics has Ponzi attributes, not just as a mining coin, with no fixed issuance volume. The issuance and staking of USUAL is tied to the TVL of USD0 (USD0++), forming an inflation model, but the issuance volume will vary according to the protocol's 'revenue growth', strictly ensuring the inflation rate < protocol growth rate.

Whenever the USD0++ bond token is newly minted, a corresponding proportion of $USUAL will be generated and distributed to all parties, and this conversion ratio (Minting Rate) will be highest at the beginning after the TGE, following a gradually descending exponential curve, aimed at rewarding early participants and creating token scarcity later to promote the intrinsic value of the token.

In simple terms, the higher the TVL, the less the USUAL emissions, and the higher the value of a single USUAL.

The higher the price of USUAL -> the more incentive to stake USD0 -> the higher the TVL -> the less USUAL emissions -> the higher the price of USUAL.

USD0's market cap increased by 66% in the past week, reaching $1.4 billion, surpassing PyUSD, with USD0++ APY also reaching as high as 50%.

Recently, Usual also reached a cooperation with Ethena, accepting USDtb as collateral, and subsequently migrating part of the supporting assets of stablecoin USD0 to USDtb. In the coming months, Usual will become one of the largest minters and holders of USDtb.

As part of this cooperation, Usual will establish an sUSDe treasury for USD0++ bond product holders, allowing Usual users to earn sUSDe rewards while maintaining their basic exposure to Usual. This will enable Usual users to leverage Ethena's rewards while increasing Ethena's TVL. Ultimately, Usual will incentivize and enable the swap between USDtb-USD0 and USDtb-sUSDe to increase liquidity between core assets.

Recently, they also opened USUAL staking, with rewards sourced from stakers sharing 10% of the total supply of USUAL, with current APY reaching up to 730%.

Usually:

  • Current price: 1.04

  • Market cap ranking: 197

  • Circulating market cap: 488,979,186

  • TVL: 1,404,764,184

  • TVL/MC: 2,865

Source: usual.money

Anzen: Tokenization of credit assets

The USDz issued by Anzen currently supports five supply chains, including ETH, ARB, MANTA, BASE, and BLAST, with the underlying assets being a private credit asset portfolio. USDz can be staked to obtain sUSDz and earn RWA income.

The underlying assets collaborate with the U.S. licensed brokerage Percent, with the portfolio's risk exposure primarily in the U.S. market, with no single asset exceeding 15%. The portfolio is diversified with 6-7 assets, and the current APY is approximately 10%.

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 has secured $4 million in seed funding, with participation from Mechanism Capital, Circle Ventures, Frax, Arca, Infinity Ventures, Cherubic Ventures, Palm Drive Ventures, M31 Capital, and Kraynos Capital. It successfully raised $3 million in public offerings using Fjord.

In terms of ANZ token design, a ve model is used, allowing ANZ to lock and stake to obtain veANZ and earn protocol revenue sharing.

Source: Anzen

ANZ:

  • Current price: 0.02548

  • Market cap ranking: 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 RLP,

  • USR: A stablecoin minted using ETH as collateral, over-collateralized, while RPL ensures price peg, and USR can be staked to obtain stUSR for returns.

  • RLP: USR has over 100% collateral, with the excess collateral used to support RLP. RLP is not a stablecoin, and the amount of collateral required to mint or redeem RLP tokens is determined based on the latest RLP price.

To generate USR, Resolv uses a delta-neutral strategy, with most collateral stored directly on-chain and staked. Some collateral is held by institutions as futures margin.

100% of on-chain collateral is deposited in Lido, with the shorting collateral margin between 20% to 30%, meaning using 3.3 to 5 times leverage, with 47% on Binance, 21% on Deribit, and 31.3% on Hyperliquid (using Ceffu and Fireblocks as Cex custodians).

Source of income: On-chain staking and funding rates

Basic rewards (70%): stUSR + RLP holders

Risk premium (30%): RLP

Assuming the collateral pool generates a profit of $20,000:

  • The basic reward calculation formula is $20,000 * 70% = $14,000, distributed proportionally based on the TVL of stUSR and RLP.

  • The risk premium calculation formula is $20,000 * 30% = $6,000, allocated to RLP.

It can be seen that RLP receives a larger share of profits, but if the funding rate is negative, funds will be deducted from the RLP pool, and the risk of RLP is also higher.

Recently, Resolv launched on the Base network and introduced a points activity, allowing holders of USR or RLP to earn points, laying the groundwork for future token issuance.

Related data:

  • stUSR: 12.53%

  • RLP: 21.7%

  • TVL: 183M

  • Collateral rate: 126%