Less than a month after the mainnet launch, the BTC-collateralized stablecoin YU from @yalaorg reached its minting limit of 30M, leading them to open the second season on the 13th, which was filled up just yesterday, taking only ten days. The total supply across the network has now exceeded 75M. Let's research why the momentum is so strong.
1. Main Player Analysis
Firstly, on the YBTC chain, we can see that the BTC debt ceiling was filled as soon as it opened, with a total of 970 BTC locked up, but only 93 addresses are involved, clearly dominated by large holders with significant strength.
The underlying logic isn't just simple trust in endorsements from institutions like @Polychain and @EtherealVC, but rather Yala provided a triple guarantee of CDP + self-custody + CRSM for large holders in the early stages of the protocol.
CDP refers to the ability to use WBTC, mainstream LST assets on EVM, or to use native BTC for self-custodial deposits. Native BTC, after being time-locked, exists in the large holder's own address, at which point a corresponding vault is created to mint YU. Once the time expires, the YBTC in the corresponding vault will be destroyed to ensure asset anchoring.
If the vault approaches the liquidation line within the time frame, CRSM will automatically withdraw part of the position from the YU earning scenario to repay the debt and maintain the collateralization ratio. During these days of drastic BTC fluctuations, Yala's collateral system has remained stable.
2. Hot Tracks
As of mid-2025, the top 3 most discussed crypto topics outside the circle have already secured a spot due to Circle's excellent performance post-listing: now the stablecoin battle is not only attracting attention from within the circle but also from outside.
The GENIUS Act has been passed, and @chromitemerge summarized the current major factions: the offshore faction represented by USDT and the son of the Commerce Secretary, 21 Capital; the compliant faction mainly consisting of USDC and Coinbase; new entrant USD1, supported by the Trump family, Binance, and UAE MGX, is sure to want a share of the pie; along with banks and tech giants eyeing the space, it is evident that the entire track will grow larger and will not be limited to just pricing digital assets.
Yala's co-founder @VickyXAI came from Circle; why create Yala? Just like the profits of USDC before it was listed cannot be compared to USDT, as traditional players expand the track, the beneficiaries will certainly be the native stablecoin projects in the crypto space.
Ultimately, on-chain will still return to being on-chain, whether it's CEX, DEX, or stablecoins.
Besides stronger composability on-chain, it’s mainly due to the vast space for compliant arbitrage, which incurs no additional costs from various regulations, so most of YU's profits will be distributed to community participants, allowing Yala's expansion rate to be very fast.
Even for a strong player like PayPal, when it entered the stablecoin market with PYUSD, it offered a 20% annualized subsidy and still took 9 months to reach around 70M supply.
3. Participation Methods
Currently, the second phase of minting is full, but there are still opportunities to join. Retail investors can easily participate by directly swapping for some YU and then staking it in the stability pool to earn 10% interest.
Join the team: https://t.co/yuYzJHud1I
For large holders, setting up a vault to mint YU requires paying an annual interest of 9%, but for retail investors, it’s not needed; they can smoothly exchange with USDC 1:1 with virtually no slippage.
Looking solely at the APR itself, it is currently one of the higher-yielding stablecoin investments, as this yield won't be too diluted due to the debt ceiling.
In addition to APR, there are also liquidation profits paid in YBTC and subsequent airdrop rewards in Raspberry points. The number of addresses storing YU on the mainnet is only in the thousands, and now the mainnet gas costs are not high, so I divided several accounts to participate; there might be surprises.
Overall, it is a relatively good farming choice, and any funds not stored in Plasma can fully participate in Yala. There are still over 400,000 YU in LP, so teachers should hurry to stock up and not wait for a premium like with Huma later.
If you have time, you can also sign in daily and interact socially to earn Raspberry points, but testnet and interaction points are separate, and it’s unclear how they will be allocated later.
4. Big Things Are Coming
I recommended Yala when the mainnet launched, but so much has happened in this month, especially with CRCL continuously hitting new highs, which has further boosted my confidence in Yala.
In the past, traditional stablecoins like USDT/USDC saw retail investors contributing liquidity to institutions, which steadily earned treasury yields, and in many DeFi protocols, retail investors had to assume a large part of the smart contract risks to make money.
With Yala, it’s completely different. As mentioned in point 3, the APR profits for retail investors come from the interest paid by large holders for borrowing stablecoins against their collateralized BTC. This model creates a decentralized creditor-debtor relationship between retail and institutional investors, meaning retail investors can become creditors to institutions by holding staked YU, with interest settled in real-time in YU, which is very comfortable.
I followed Yala's official Twitter from the start, and seeing the rapid filling of these two phases, it is likely that the TGE will come soon; otherwise, they wouldn't need to set a debt ceiling.
