Usual, Anzen, Resolv: Unveiling the Anchoring Mechanisms of Interest-Bearing Stablecoin Protocols

Stablecoins have become a battleground. Cryptocurrency has always been known to the outside world for its high volatility and the rapid rise and fall of tokens, which seems to have little to do with "stability". However, the development of decentralized finance (DeFi) has put forward higher requirements for the stability of tokens, especially the stability of large-value tokens, which is closely related to the development of decentralized stablecoins.

Stablecoins are mostly anchored to the US dollar, which can not only be used as chips to exchange for other tokens, but also be used for payment services and other functions. At present, the overall market value of this sector exceeds 200 billion US dollars, which is already a relatively mature sector in the crypto market.

However, the most common USDT and USDC on the market are both centralized institutions, and their combined market share is close to 90%. Other projects also want to grab a piece of this pie. For example, Web 2 payment giant PayPal launched its own stablecoin pyUSD in 2023 to take a position in advance; recently, XRP's parent company Ripple also issued RLUSD in an attempt to challenge the stablecoin market.

The above two cases are more about payment services using stablecoins, most of which are backed by US dollars or short-term government bonds as collateral. Decentralized stablecoins place more emphasis 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 behind it to the anchoring mechanism, the development of decentralized stablecoins has gone through several iterations. The USDe, which was pioneered by Ethena and uses futures arbitrage + staking to generate income, opened up users' imagination of interest-bearing stablecoins. The market value of USDe stablecoin is also the third in the market, reaching US$5.9 billion. Recently, Ethena and BlackRock have cooperated to launch the USDtb stablecoin with income provided by RWA. This product avoids the risk of negative funding rates and can generate stable interest regardless of bull or bear markets, complementing the overall product line and making Ethena the focus of market attention.

In view of the success of Ethena, more and more interest-bearing stablecoin protocols have emerged in the market, such as Usual, which recently announced a partnership with Ethena; Anzen, which is built on the Base ecosystem; and Resolv, which uses ETH as collateral. What are the anchoring mechanisms of these three protocols? Where do the revenue sources behind them come from? Let WOO X Research show you.

Usual: Strong team background and Ponzi-like token design

Usual is an RWA interest-bearing stablecoin. The interest-bearing assets behind it are short-term government bonds, and the stablecoin is USD0. After staking USD0, you will get USD0++, and $USUAL is used as a staking reward. They believe that the current stablecoin issuers are too centralized, just like traditional banks, and rarely distribute value to users. USUAL will make users the same owners of the project, and 90% of the value generated will be returned to users.

In terms of the project's background, CEO Pierre Person was a member of the French Parliament and a political advisor to French President Emmanuel Macron. Yoko, an executive in Asia, was a fundraiser for the former French presidential election. The project has good political and business relations in France, and the most important thing about RWA is to transfer physical assets to the chain. Supervision and government support are the key to the success of the project. Obviously, USUAL has good political and business relations, which is also a strong moat for the project.

Back to the project mechanism itself, the USUAL token economics has Ponzi properties. It is not just a mining coin and has no fixed issuance volume. The issuance of USUAL is linked to the TVL of the staked USD0 (USD0++), which is an inflation model. However, the issuance volume will vary according to the "income growth" of the protocol, strictly ensuring that the inflation rate < the protocol growth rate.

Every time USD0++ bond tokens are minted, a corresponding proportion of $USUAL will be generated and released to all parties. The minting rate will be the highest at the beginning after TGE, and it is a gradually declining exponential curve. The purpose is to reward early participants and create token scarcity in the later stage, thereby driving up the intrinsic value of tokens.

Simply put, the higher the TVL, the less USUAL is emitted and the higher the value of a single USUAL.

The higher the USUAL price is -> more incentives to stake USD0 -> higher TVL -> lower USUAL emissions -> higher USUAL price

USD0's market value increased by 6.6% in the past week, reaching 1.4 billion US dollars