In recent years, we have seen too many narratives of 'the future belongs to stablecoins', which are more about compliance attempts in a technological gray area.

But starting from the second half of last year, stablecoins are entering a whole new stage — a institutionalized consensus is beginning to establish:

1) The U.S. (GENIUS Act) has passed in the House of Representatives, establishing a federal regulatory framework for USD stablecoins for the first time;
2) The Korean FSC issued guidelines for stablecoin issuance, encouraging banks to participate;
3) The EU MiCA legislation has officially come into effect, requiring stablecoins to have reserve disclosure and custody mechanisms.

Hong Kong is also eager to try. These actions release a core signal:

Stablecoins will certainly become a part of the national financial architecture during Trump's term.

Two things that will inevitably happen next —

-- Physical institutions (Walmart, Wells Fargo, Revolut) begin to experiment with issuing stablecoins
-- TradFi will use stablecoins to manage floating funds and participate in on-chain yield products

But these stablecoins themselves are not value creators; if they are just lying on-chain to earn interest, they are still inefficient capital. They need structure, liquidity, and market participation.

So a key question arises:

In this institutionalized process, who can become the bearer of the stablecoin yield market?


1. New value anchors of stablecoins in interest rate cut cycles

I think this question needs to be viewed in the context of the broader environment —

Recently, market expectations for interest rate cuts have been growing stronger, especially after the Federal Reserve signaled 'there may be 1-2 rate cuts this year', the on-chain capital structure has quietly changed.

We need a reverse perspective:

From the perspective of traditional finance, interest rate cuts often mean an increase in risk appetite, a decrease in cash returns, and may also compress the appeal of some fixed-income assets. They are especially sensitive to RWA-type assets — because they directly depend on off-chain interest rate curves, the play space becomes narrower for on-chain users.

But for DeFi-native stablecoins, it’s different; they don't rely on 'interest spreads' for their survival; rather, interest rate cuts are a rare window period:

-- No off-chain debt burden, unaffected by Fed interest rate constraints
-- Flexible deployment, combining various on-chain yields
-- More easily attract TradFi users seeking flexible allocation

In other words, interest rate cuts = shrinking TradFi yields, DeFi becomes relatively more attractive.

Therefore, the real beneficiaries of this round of interest rate cuts will not be those tokenized government bonds. Instead, it will be DeFi-native stablecoin protocols and structured protocols that can 'activate' these stablecoins.

This is the key role of structured protocols like Pendle at this stage — to accommodate the anchoring demand for structured yields.


2. Pendle: The strongest liquidity scenario in the current on-chain stablecoin market

In the past year, Pendle has undergone significant transformation and breakthroughs —

1) TVL reached a new high ($5.29 billion), with 87% being stablecoin assets
2) The trend of stablecoinization in the main pool is evident (USDe / USDO / AID / USDF)
3) The number of users exceeded 70,000, with trading volume exceeding $16 billion

Not only are DeFi farmers and retail investors locking interest and earning rewards, but now even institutions are beginning to use Pendle as a front-end for structured yield —

Republic, Spartan, Amber, etc., are starting to use PT for stablecoin strategy management
Edge Capital and others are deploying Pendle as a front-end for arbitrage products
Converge has included Pendle in the RWA-Fi yield market infrastructure


On the stablecoin yield track, Pendle has already become a protocol layer capable of 'pricing + market making'. It connects:

Floating funds from traditional finance
Yield incentives + point value expectations from DeFi
Risk control and hedging demands from institutions

Currently, over $2.5 billion of PT is being used as DeFi collateral on Pendle. In addition, Morpho and Silo have also started to support Pendle's LP asset collateral, and other lending platforms are also advancing deployment, which could release greater leverage in the future.

This combination ability of yield + collateral + leverage can significantly enhance strategy returns for institutions. So, if you understand it from this perspective:

Why most of Pendle's main pool consists of stablecoins, why institutions are eager to connect to PT, and why Ethena's TVL surged — it will all seem very reasonable.


3. Can 'yields' themselves become a new asset class on-chain?

When we discuss stablecoins today, most of the time we are still looking at their payment functionality, anchoring mechanisms, and reserve quality.

But when stablecoins become part of the sovereign framework, their uses will change:

-- TradFi will use them to purchase on-chain structured products, rather than just cross-border settlements
-- DAO treasuries will use them as a yield base, rather than just static reserves
-- Protocols like Maker and Ethena will build on them to create compound yields

In the future, we may see many legally issued stablecoins, many high-yield products of RWA type, and many market makers using PT arbitrage structured strategies. If this trend continues to advance, we may indeed see:

'Yields' themselves will become a new asset type on-chain.

This is also something that Pendle is slowly accomplishing, which is very difficult but extremely crucial. What can be confirmed now is that its structural design inherently aligns with this trend —


The vePendle model can steadily absorb platform value returns (returned $13.1 million in the first half of the year)

The main asset stablecoinization inherently possesses advantages of volatility resistance, combinability, and ease of valuation

Structured combination plays are extremely suitable for large funds and institutional deployment (hedging + locking interest + yield trading)

If LPs are widely opened as collateral in the future, it will release a new round of leverage space.

So, returning to the initial question:

Who can connect TradFi funds with the DeFi yield market?
Who can provide standardized yield structure trading and clearing?
Who can become the price discovery hub in this stable yield structure?

I believe Pendle is getting closer to this answer!