Since its launch in 2021, TreehouseFi has focused on addressing the core issue of the DeFi sector: the lack of fixed-income infrastructure. Through its dual-core design of the tAssets liquid staking system and the DOR decentralized interest rate benchmark, TreehouseFi seeks to build a bridge between the crypto asset and traditional fixed-income markets. As of August 2025, the project has deployed on three chains: Ethereum, Arbitrum, and Mantle, serving over 60,000 users and surpassing $500 million in total value locked (TVL). This project has established a unique "product-infrastructure-ecosystem" strategy within the DeFi fixed-income arena. This article will objectively analyze the project's differentiated advantages and future growth potential from three perspectives: core value proposition, operational status, and competition and risk.
1. Core Value Logic: Dual-core Mechanisms to Solve Industry Pain Points
TreehouseFi's core competitiveness lies in its dual ability to address both "user-side demand" and "industry-side bottlenecks" in the DeFi fixed income market. The collaborative design of tAssets and DOR constitutes the cornerstone of the project's value.
From the user demand side, tAssets (with tETH as the core) specifically addresses the pain point of "the difficulty in balancing high returns and high liquidity": Unlike traditional liquid staking tokens that only provide a single staking income, tAssets increases annualized returns by 10%-15% through a multi-source income model of "basic staking income + market efficiency income (MEY) + Nuts points + re-staking rewards" - MEY is achieved through back-end automated arbitrage strategies (such as capturing the interest rate difference between Aave and Compound), and users can enjoy it without manual operation; at the same time, tAssets supports staking in both Aave's Prime (institutional level) and Core (retail level) markets, with a staking rate of up to 85% (higher than the 70% of ordinary LSTs). Users can quickly borrow stablecoins such as USDT and USDC, taking into account both returns and capital flexibility, which is very attractive to users who need "passive income + emergency liquidity".
From an industry perspective, the DOR decentralized interest rate benchmark fills the gap in DeFi's lack of a unified "pricing anchor." Traditional finance relies on interest rate benchmarks like SOFR and LIBOR to build a vast ecosystem of fixed-income products. However, DeFi protocols face fragmented interest rates (e.g., the interest rates for the same asset can vary by 2%-3% across different platforms), making derivative product development difficult. DOR ensures data reliability through a "quoter staking" mechanism, including outlier removal and a reward-and-penalty system. Quoters must stake TREEs or tAssets to qualify. If their quotes deviate from the consensus rate by less than 0.5%, they receive TREE rewards; if they deviate by more than 5%, their staked assets are deducted. The first implemented TESR (Ethereum Staking Rate Curve) has established 7-day, 30-day, and 90-day term structures. Currently, three institutional market makers have integrated it, using it to design products such as fixed-rate loans and interest rate swaps, providing critical infrastructure for the standardization of DeFi fixed-income products.
II. Operational Status: Ecological Health and the Rationality of Token Economy
The project's operational data and token economic design directly affect its short-term stability and long-term sustainability. Judging from its current performance, TreehouseFi already has a relatively healthy ecological foundation.
At the ecological operation level, it presents the characteristics of "double increase in scale and quality": First, the user structure is high-quality. Among the more than 60,000 tAssets holders, 30% are long-term users holding positions for more than 90 days, which is much higher than the average long-term user ratio of 15% in DeFi projects, indicating that users have a high degree of recognition of the product; second, the asset landing is solid. The collateral scale of tAssets on Aave has exceeded US$120 million, accounting for 8% of the platform's ETH-type collateral assets, becoming an important collateral in the stablecoin lending market. At the same time, it cooperates with Pendle to launch a tAssets income right split product to further enrich the usage scenarios; third, the expansion rhythm is clear, and it is planned to launch "on-chain Treasury tAsset" in Q4 2025 (users can indirectly invest in U.S. short-term Treasury bonds through tAsset, with an expected annualized rate of 2.5%-3%), and expand to 2 new public chains within the next 3 months, and gradually realize the "crypto assets + traditional assets" and "multi-chain coverage" ecological layout.
At the token economic level, TREE is designed to balance "ecological incentives" and "value stability": from a functional perspective, TREE runs through the core links of the ecosystem - paying DOR data query fees, staking to participate in quotes, and voting to determine protocol parameters (such as the frequency of tAssets arbitrage and the use of the ecological fund), and has practical use scenarios; from an allocation perspective, 50% of the total supply of 1 billion is used for the community and ecosystem (20% community rewards, 10% ecological fund, and 5.75% future airdrops), and team and investor tokens are linearly unlocked over 4 years (including a 12-month lock-up) to avoid early selling pressure; from a market performance perspective, as of August 2025, the price range of $TREE is $0.3533-$0.373, with a 24-hour trading volume of over US$27 million. Mainstream exchanges such as Binance and KuCoin provide sufficient liquidity. Although it has fallen by about 41% from its historical high of $0.6068 in July, it is mainly affected by the overall DeFi market sentiment, and the token base has not experienced abnormal fluctuations.
3. Competitive Barriers and Potential Risks: Objectively Examining Project Development Boundaries
TreehouseFi has differentiated advantages in the field, but it also needs to face up to the potential risks brought by industry competition and the external environment, which is the key to evaluating the long-term value of the project.
In terms of competitive barriers, the project has built a "triple moat": First, it has a first-mover advantage in the track. The size of the DeFi fixed income market is only 0.1% of the traditional market. TreehouseFi is the first project to have both "user-side income products and industry-side interest rate benchmarks", which makes it more ecologically synergistic than competitors that focus on a single link (such as only liquidity staking or only providing interest rate data); second, it has the advantage of resource endorsement. It received US$18 million in financing in the seed round (with participation from top crypto institutions such as YZi Labs and Jump Capital) and a valuation of US$400 million in the A round (with the introduction of traditional financial institution MassMutual Ventures). Not only did it obtain financial support, but it also leveraged institutional resources to promote RWA cooperation and expand institutional users; third, it has the advantage of team capabilities. The core members cover "crypto technology + traditional finance" - founder Brandon Goh has 5 years of on-chain data experience, Bryan Goh has been deeply involved in the traditional fixed income market for 10 years (responsible for RWA docking), and Thu Như Anh is a former Ethereum Foundation developer (leading technical architecture), with cross-domain capabilities to implement complex infrastructure.
In terms of potential risks, we need to pay attention to two core challenges: First, the risk of intensified market competition. As the DeFi fixed-income track becomes more popular, leading projects such as Aave and MakerDAO may launch similar interest rate benchmark products. If TreehouseFi fails to quickly expand the industry penetration of DOR, it may face user diversion; second, the compliance risk of RWA implementation. The on-chainization of traditional assets involves complex issues such as underlying asset ownership confirmation and cross-border compliance. If the "on-chain tAsset" encounters delays in compliance approval, asset custody and other links, it may affect the pace of ecological expansion; in addition, the price of $TREE is greatly affected by the overall volatility of the crypto market, and there is still a risk of valuation correction in the short term.
Summary and Future Outlook
Overall, TreehouseFi, through the dual-core design of tAssets and DOR, accurately addresses the core pain points of the DeFi fixed-income track. Its ecological scale, technical security and team background have laid a solid foundation for the project. Although it faces market fluctuations and competitive pressure in the short term, its long-term value logic and differentiated advantages are relatively clear.
Future development can be divided into three phases: In the short term (Q4 2025-Q1 2026), if the new chain deployment and on-chain tAsset Treasury bonds are successfully implemented, the ecosystem TVL is expected to exceed US$700 million, and the price of $TREE is expected to rebound to $0.50-0.60, mainly driven by new users and institutional funds brought by the RWA product. In the medium term (2026), if DOR successfully expands to ecosystems such as BNB Chain and Solana, and derivatives such as interest rate swaps and floating rate bonds are launched, the RWA scale is expected to exceed US$300 million, and the price of TREE may reach $0.80-1.00, driven by the establishment of DOR's industry benchmark status and the expansion of the ecosystem product variety. In the long term (2027), if the penetration rate of the DeFi fixed income track increases to 1% of the traditional market, TreehouseFi is expected to become the industry standard interest rate benchmark, and the ecosystem TVL will exceed US$2 billion. The value of TREE will grow in tandem with the scale of the ecosystem, but it will need to rely on the dual support of project implementation progress and the overall industry development environment. @Treehouse Official #Treehouse $TREE
