Solayer, a staking platform built on the Solana blockchain, has recently introduced sUSD, a synthetic stablecoin backed by real-world assets (RWA). This new stablecoin aims to provide a decentralized and user-owned alternative to existing stablecoins.
Unlike traditional stablecoins, which rely on a central authority and are pegged to a fiat currency, sUSD is backed by a diversified portfolio of low-risk assets such as Treasury bills and government bonds issued by the United States Department of the Treasury.
With sUSD, anyone can access tokenized real-world assets starting with the U.S. Treasury Bill, which is the first asset onboarded in collaboration with OpenEden, a tokenization platform that offers a tokenized U.S. Treasury product with an “A” rating from Moody’s. Solayer plans to expand its offering to include other low-risk real-world instruments like oil and gold in the future.
One of the key features of sUSD is its decentralized approach. It allows users to mint and redeem directly without relying on centralized institutions, thanks to Solayer’s non-custodial request-for-quote (RFQ) marketplace. With a minimum entry point of $5, anyone can access sUSD and earn a portion of the yield generated by the underlying RWAs. This yield is automatically distributed in USDC, similar to earning interest in a traditional savings account.
sUSD also offers instant redemption back to USDC, addressing the liquidity concerns often associated with holding RWAs on-chain. Furthermore, it can be used as collateral for proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanisms, providing an extra layer of security to decentralized networks like Solana and Ethereum.
The creators of sUSD, Solayer Core, envision a future where crypto and traditional finance seamlessly integrate. They believe that stablecoins should be decentralized and user-owned to uphold the core promise of individual freedom in the crypto space. Similar to an automated market maker (AMM), Solayer’s RFQ protocol allows anyone to create quotes, and qualified tokenizers can become RWA liquidity providers.
Stablecoins, once niche assets, are now gaining significant attention due to their increasing global adoption and diverse use cases. According to Artemis, stablecoin transactions have surged, with daily transaction volumes exceeding $66.77 billion, marking a 73% increase in the past 24 hours. In the last 30 days, the total transaction volume for stablecoins has surpassed $2 trillion, nearly doubling from the previous month. Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC) remain the dominant players in the market, with $112.4 billion and $33.5 billion in transaction volume, respectively, over the last 30 days.