Stablecoins Enter the 'Earning Era': A Comprehensive Interpretation of Yield-bearing Stablecoins

Beyond the anchoring attributes, starting from 2025, stablecoins are entering a brand new "earning" phase. This article is sourced from a piece written by imToken, organized, translated, and authored by ForesightNews. (Background: What are yield-bearing stablecoins? Overview of five major projects: USDe, USDY, PYUSD) (Additional context: Overview of seven dedicated stablecoin chains: Plasma, Stable, Tempo… opening up new battlefields for payments) Have you recently seen a 12% annualized yield for USDC on certain platforms? This is not just a gimmick. In the past, stablecoin holders were often "interest-free depositors," while issuers invested the deposited funds in safe assets such as U.S. Treasuries and notes to earn substantial returns, just like USDT/Tether and USDC/Circle do. Now, the exclusive bonuses that used to belong to issuers are being redistributed—aside from the interest subsidy battle for USDC, more and more new generation yield-bearing stablecoin projects are breaking this "yield wall" and allowing token holders to directly share the interest income from the underlying assets. This not only changes the value logic of stablecoins but could also become a brand new growth engine for RWA and the Web3 track. 1. What are yield-bearing stablecoins? By definition, yield-bearing stablecoins refer to stablecoins whose underlying assets can generate income and directly distribute that income (usually derived from U.S. debt, RWA, or on-chain earnings) to token holders. This is distinctly different from traditional stablecoins (like USDT/USDC), as their earnings belong to the issuers, and holders only enjoy the advantage of being pegged to the dollar without receiving interest income. Yield-bearing stablecoins turn holding tokens into a form of passive investment tool, as they distribute the interest income from U.S. Treasury bonds, which Tether/USDT previously monopolized, to a wide range of stablecoin holders. An example may help clarify: The process by which Tether issues USDT essentially involves crypto users using dollars to "purchase" USDT—when Tether issues 10 billion USD worth of USDT, it means crypto users deposit 10 billion USD with Tether to obtain these USDT. Once Tether receives this 10 billion USD, it does not need to pay interest to the corresponding users, effectively obtaining real dollar funds from crypto users at zero cost. If it buys U.S. Treasuries, it gains interest income at zero cost and no risk. Source: Messari According to Tether's disclosed second-quarter attestation report, it directly holds over 157 billion USD in U.S. government bonds (including 105.5 billion USD directly held and 21.3 billion USD indirectly held), making it one of the world's largest holders of U.S. Treasuries—according to Messari data, as of July 31, 2025, Tether surpassed South Korea to become the 18th largest holder of U.S. Treasuries. This means that even at a treasury yield of around 4%, Tether can earn about 6 billion USD annually (roughly 700 million USD per quarter). The reported operating profit of Tether in the second quarter reached 4.9 billion USD also confirms the high profits of this model. Based on the market practice of "stablecoins are no longer a single narrative tool; their use varies by person and need," imToken has categorized stablecoins into multiple exploratory subcategories (further reading (Stablecoin worldview: How to build a stablecoin classification framework from the user perspective?)). Among them, according to imToken's classification method, yield-bearing stablecoins are singled out as a special subclass that can bring continuous income to holders, mainly including two main categories: Native interest-bearing stablecoins: Users only need to hold these stablecoins to automatically earn income, similar to a bank's demand deposit. The tokens themselves are a type of interest-generating asset, similar to USDe, USDS, etc.; Stablecoins providing official yield mechanisms: These stablecoins may not necessarily generate interest automatically, but their issuers or management protocols provide official yield channels, requiring users to perform specific operations, such as depositing them into designated savings protocols (like DAI's deposit rate mechanism DSR), staking, or exchanging for specific yield certificates to start earning interest, similar to DAI, etc.; If the period from 2020 to 2024 is the "expansion period for stablecoins," then 2025 will be the "dividend period for stablecoins." Balancing compliance, yield, and liquidity, yield-bearing stablecoins may become the next trillion-dollar-level stablecoin sub-track. Source: imToken Web (web.token.im) yield-bearing stablecoins 2. Overview of top yield-bearing stablecoin projects From a specific implementation path perspective, most yield-bearing stablecoins are closely related to the tokenization of U.S. Treasury bonds—on-chain tokens held by users essentially anchor assets held by custodians in U.S. debt, preserving the low-risk attributes and yield capabilities of the bonds while providing high liquidity of on-chain assets and allowing integration with DeFi components, leading to financial plays such as leverage and lending. Currently, in the market, in addition to established protocols like MakerDAO and Frax Finance continuing to invest, new players like Ethena (USDe) and Ondo Finance are also rapidly accelerating their development, forming a diverse pattern from protocol-based to CeDeFi hybrid types. Ethena's USDe, as a major player in the current wave of yield-bearing stablecoins, has recently seen its supply surpass the 10 billion mark for the first time. According to data from Ethena Labs' official website, as of the time of writing, USDe's annualized yield still reaches 9.31%, having previously maintained over 30%. The high yield primarily comes from two sources: ETH's LSD staking yield; the funding rate income from Delta hedging positions (i.e., the top position of perpetual futures); among them, the former is relatively stable, currently fluctuating around 4%, while the latter completely depends on market sentiment, thus USDe's annualized yield is somewhat directly influenced by the overall network funding rate (market sentiment). Source: Ethena Ondo Finance USDY As a star project in the RWA track, Ondo Finance has been focused on bringing traditional fixed-income products to the on-chain market. Its launched USD Yield (USDY) is a tokenized note backed by short-term U.S. Treasuries and bank demand deposits, essentially belonging to an unregistered debt certificate, allowing holders to directly hold and enjoy income without real-name verification. USDY essentially provides on-chain funds with a risk position close to that of Treasuries, while endowing the token with composability, allowing integration with DeFi lending, staking, and other modules to amplify yields. This design makes USDY an important representative of current on-chain currency market funds. PayPal's PYUSD When PayPal's PYUSD was launched in 2023, it was primarily positioned as a compliant payment stablecoin, with Paxos as the custodian, pegged 1:1 to dollar deposits and short-term U.S. Treasuries.