💵 Yield-bearing stablecoins are in

There are at least 50 stablecoins today. To stand out among the pack or even have a chance of competing with Tether, you really have to give users what they want: yield. That’s what Noble is doing today.

Two down, mainnet to go:

​Ethereum's Pectra upgrade has successfully launched on the Sepolia testnet, despite a minor snag that developers say won’t affect Ethereum mainnet.

The upgrade introduces 11 Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs), notably EIP-7691, which doubles the target blob count, thus increasing Ethereum’s throughput.

Sepolia encountered an issue related to the deposit contract — the smart contract that enables users to stake their ETH. The Holesky testnet faced a similar, but independent problem where a misconfiguration among validators led to a chain split that has yet to be resolved. The Ethereum All Core Developers call tomorrow is expected to focus on how to restore Holesky as well as the mainnet activation timeline.

The Sepolia snag is reportedly easier to resolve, and developers have a client update already in progress.

— Macauley Peterson

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Noble launches USDN

Noble’s USDN “Noble Dollar” launches today.

USDN is a yield-bearing stablecoin with a current yield of 4.15% derived from its overcollateralized backing (102%) from US Treasury bills.

Noble is a Cosmos chain that has historically been a facilitator in digital asset issuance. The company has helped launch various stablecoin assets, such as Circle’s USDC, Ondo’s USDY, Hashnote’s USYC and Monerium’s EURe, across dozens of chains

With USDN, Noble is effectively becoming an original asset issuer. 

Why care for yet another stablecoin? USDN is designed on the principles of “composable yield,” which enables apps or rollups that integrate the stablecoin to direct how the yield is programmatically distributed.

This contrasts to stablecoin issuers such as Tether, which does not share the underlying yield, effectively monetizing the end-user or app distribution for its own profit as part of its business model.

“$USDN is an evolution of stablecoin liquidity for the modular ecosystem. We believe that composable yield will be a game changer for appchains, users, developers and infrastructure providers,” said Noble co-founder Jelena Djuric.

USDN’s composable yield design is enabled by M^0, a stablecoin middleware infrastructure layer. Its “M” stablecoin serves as an extendable building block for players like Noble to launch their own custom-branded stablecoin on top of their stack. 

Think of M^0 as offering a “stablecoin distribution as a service” (SDaaS).

M^0 has also previously partnered with Usual to create USD0. Like Noble’s USDN, USD0 opens up a revenue stream for apps by sharing the yield from the underlying T-bill backing.

Oher stablecoins, such as Agora’s AUSD, are similarly yield-bearing. Based on DefiLlama, AUSD is today a $78 million dollar market cap asset on Sui, Avalanche, Mantle and Ethereum, while USD0 has a market cap of just over $1 billion.

To challenge the moats of today’s dominant stablecoins like USDT and USDC, stablecoins that promise an intrinsic yield look to be table stakes going forward. 

Last November, Coinbase also announced rewards for holding USDC, currently offering a 4.1% yield.

On launch, USDN will be supported in Keplr wallet and can be purchased via Kado, a payments infrastructure company.

You can also earn Noble points in the USDN Staking Vault, but that comes with a lockup of up to four months and forfeiture of the underlying yield. 

Alternatively, USDN depositors can deposit into the Flexible Vault to accrue the underlying yield, plus a “boosted” yield that is forfeited from the Staking Vault.

— Donovan Choy

Correction, Mar. 5, 2025 at 2:36 pm ET: Usual USD0 was launched with M^0, not Agora AUSD.

Solana’s February onchain slowdown

Solana’s onchain activity cooled in February after a frenzied start to 2025, with key metrics declining across the board. Real Economic Value (REV) — a measure of demand for transaction execution — dropped 64% month over month to $196m, though Solana still captured 52% of global onchain demand, ahead of Ethereum’s 21%.

Application revenue followed a similar trend, falling 56% MoM to $284m but retaining a dominant 54% market share across all chains. DEX volumes also tumbled 54% MoM to $156b, though they remained over 6x higher than a year ago. Notably, memecoins still drove 64% of total DEX activity.

Meanwhile, Solana’s stablecoin supply dipped 1.8% to $11.2b, with USDC continuing to dominate at 80%.

SOL surged 40% over the weekend from Friday’s low at $125 on the back of a Trump tweet, but quickly gave back the bulk of those gains. However, Solana’s network fundamentals remain strong.

You’ll find all the details in the Blockworks Research February update from Carlos Gonzalez Campo.

Calling the Builders Who Move Fast

If you’re engineering the next generation of crypto — whether it’s infrastructure, DeFi, or something entirely new — you belong on the Permissionless stage.

Speaker applications are open. If you’re a technical founder, CTO, or dev, this is your chance to share, debate, and push the space forward.

And for those ready to prove it with code? The Hackathon is your shot. $100K+ prize bounty. Investors watching. No gimmicks — just shipping.