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Welcome back to 0xResearch. Here's what we’ve got for you today:

• Decentralizing digital dollar distribution with M^0

• Chart of the Day: Ethereum leads stablecoin growth

• Degen Corner: HAWK memecoin fail

• Recent Research: A SOL update

M^0’s modular stablecoin

M^0, a decentralized stablecoin infrastructure layer, is setting a new standard for stablecoin design with its innovative modular architecture, revenue and distribution model. Its first distributor, Noble, is pulling back the curtain on the Noble dollar, USDN, in a bid to shake up the market and disrupt entrenched players.

For the entire history of stablecoin issuance, Tether has been the dominant issuer. Its market share on Ethereum dipped to 30% in 2022 — following growth in Circle’s USDC and Binance’s BUSD — but thanks to its near monopoly on the Tron blockchain, Tether’s market cap has reigned supreme in the stablecoin space.

With Tether ostensibly healthier than ever, it maintains a significant moat — but maybe not an insurmountable one. Robbie Petersen of Delphi Digital noted the importance of M^0’s approach in August, writing that “[M^0] could be best positioned to challenge the Tether monopoly.” 

A new framework

Unlike traditional stablecoin issuers, M^0 operates a multi-issuer protocol, creating a decentralized system where issuers follow protocol rules rather than centralized mandates. Its canonical stablecoin, M, serves as a core building block for custom-branded stablecoins. Known as M-extensions, the Noble dollar is its first.

This system offers issuers full programmability, allowing these branded M-extensions to distribute yield as they see fit — whether to liquidity pools, users or other stakeholders. According to Greg Di Prisco, co-founder of M^0, this structure provides scalability, safety and liquidity unmatched by traditional issuance models.

“We don't believe that [a centralized issuer model] can possibly scale. You can't have one company controlling the entire world's money supply as stablecoins continue to grow. So, we built a protocol that enables a multi-issuer process,” Di Prisco told Blockworks.

Petersen (no relation to the current author) noted the core issue in stablecoins today is that dapps “capture none of the value they create on behalf of stablecoin issuers.” Under M^0’s model, US Treasury yield can become “not only a meaningful source of revenue for apps, but possibly even the principal source.” This transformative potential could lead to a new business model, he argues: “Selling stablecoin distribution as a service (SDaaS).”

Noble intends to pass on 100% of the USDN native yield to holders of the token — at least initially — according to Jelena Djuric, co-founder and CEO of Noble.

"Our entire growth strategy has been keeping things as frictionless as possible,” Djuric told Blockworks, noting that Noble has no transaction fees to use any of its stablecoins. “We want to keep it like that, and the beauty [of] Cosmos and IBC is that it’s low fee and it’s fast — we wouldn’t want to compromise that in any way,” she said.

Noble has previously been known for bringing USDC to IBC-connected chains, and generally improving the cross-chain routing of Circle’s stablecoins. But Djuric said USDN will complement USDC on the Noble chain, describing M^0 as “if Circle and MakerDAO [now Sky] joined forces and had a baby.”

Modularity meets interoperability

M^0 aims to meet the needs of appchains and fintech providers that want to launch their own branded stablecoins without worrying about the collateral backing, or interoperability — both are baked into the protocol underpinning M.

“All of the collateral management is done for them,” Di Prisco said. “The big difference here between other [issuers] like Paxos…is that with Paxos, you’re going through months of negotiations, paperwork, legal documents, lawyers — [but] because we’re a protocol and fully onchain, [we] can give you your own branded stablecoin in minutes,” he said.

Issuers maintain bankruptcy-remote SPVs, and are only allowed to hold 0-to-180-day T-bills that are marked to market. Their actual collateral balance is also checked daily.  “They effectively can't cheat as long as we maintain the right incentives in the ecosystem,” Di Prisco said.

All M-extensions will be fungible by default, although brand partners have some leeway about exchanges with other distributors.

For Noble, this modular design allows them to maintain a focus on ecosystem expansion. With the anticipated IBC Eureka upgrade — facilitating connections with non-Cosmos-based chains — plus integration into wormhole-supported chains, USDN will benefit from a large addressable market.

“You want to go between Osmosis and dYdX in one click with two separate tokens? You can do that on Noble,” Djuric explained.

The Noble Dollar will launch with a points campaign tied to a future Noble token, further bootstrapping adoption.

But the launch of multiple stablecoins like Agora and M^0, which provide inherent yield, cements the idea that in the future, all stablecoin applications will start with a base yield. Whether this model will truly topple the non-yield bearing incumbents remains to be seen.

— Macauley Peterson (X: @yeluacaM | Farcaster: @Macauley)

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Ethereum stablecoin supply up massively:

Since Nov. 4, Ethereum’s total stablecoin supply has seen an astounding growth from $85 billion to $104 billion. That growth alone exceeds the entire stablecoin supply of every other chain individually, except for Tron.

Across the same time period, Solana’s stablecoin supply grew $3.7 billion to $4.87 billion, Arbitrum from $4.47 billion to $5.9 billion, BNB Chain from $5.4 billion to $6.43 billion, and TON from $1.02 billion to $1.22 billion.

Tron, which is the second-largest chain by stablecoin supply, saw a slight decline from $60.73 billion to $60.68 billion. Base also saw slight drops in stablecoin supply from $3.78 billion to $3.54 billion, Sui from $385.4 million to $320 million, and Polygon PoS saw the greatest decline from $2.09 billion to $1.67 billion.

— Donovan Choy (X: @donovanchoy | Farcaster: @donovan)

SOL Update: Breaking Barriers

As 2025 nears, Solana's ecosystem continues to thrive, outperforming Ethereum in revenue (REV) and DEX trading volumes. Despite reaching an all-time high of $263 and a record SOL/ETH ratio of 0.079, Solana lags in metrics like stablecoin and BTC adoption. Proposed upgrades including SIMD 96 and SIMD 123 aim to reform Solana's fee mechanism, reducing token burns while boosting staking yields.

In November, Solana registered $328 million in net inflows, DEX volumes hit $188 billion and NFT activity surged. Institutional interest rose, with multiple Solana ETFs filed amid a favorable regulatory outlook. Transaction success rates improved alongside average TPS, reaching 1,070. Solana's TVL climbed 50% to $9.2 billion, though it trails Ethereum.

New launches, including cbBTC by Coinbase and the USDS stablecoin by Sky, indicate growing ecosystem trust. As Solana surpasses Ethereum in critical metrics, its evolving fee structure, inflation discussions and robust adoption signal further momentum as we go into 2025. 

Learn more in Blockworks Research’s full analysis by analyst Carlos Gonzalez Campo.

HAWK memecoin fail:

Coffeezilla: “This is one of the most miserable, horrible launches I’ve ever seen in my life…”

Haliey Welch: “Okay, then why the fuck are you on then?”

That snippet came from last night’s X Spaces for the HAWK memecoin launch by Haliey Welch, aka “The Hawk Tuah Girl.” In what might be the fastest rug pull of all time, HAWK launched yesterday to a $490 million market cap, and then nuked to a $64 million market cap within 30 minutes. HAWK has since dumped to a $27 million market cap at time of writing.

HAWK’s tokenomics might be the most egregious yet: Only 2% was allocated to the public with a 17% “Strategic Allocation” for KOLs that were fully unlocked on token generation.

Welch has publicly claimed that the internal team did not sell any tokens, but insiders were caught onchain doing so. According to Bubblemaps, 96% of the token supply was in a related cluster.

“Straight Tuah Prison” (TUAH), an alternative memecoin, launched as a response to the disaster. It has since climbed to a $12.3 million market cap. Maybe something good will come out of this after all.

— Donovan Choy

• SUI spiked as high as 19% today after announcing Phantom Wallet is integrating the chain. The wallet’s multichain support includes Solana, Bitcoin and Ethereum. With seven million active users, Phantom offers Sui users a popular alternative to the niche original Sui wallet choices. The move may encourage Solana users to try the chain, which also supports bridging via Wormhole’s Portal.

• Anchorage Digital, the first OCC-chartered, US-regulated bank to support liquid staking, now offers institutions access to Liquid Collective's LsETH. Clients can stake ETH while maintaining liquidity, restake via EigenLayer and benefit from daily auto-staked rewards. The move provides a secure, flexible solution for participating in the ETH staking ecosystem.

• Namada launched its mainnet with a genesis block Tuesday. The new chain was built from scratch, but inspired by Zcash and using the Cosmos-standards such as CometBFT and IBC. It introduces features like the Multi-Asset Shielded Pool for privacy, cross-chain shielded actions, community-driven onchain governance, public goods funding and a unique Cubic proof-of-stake security mechanism.