Noble launches yield-bearing USDN stablecoin
USDN lets apps and rollups distribute the underlying T-bill yield to users
Noble and Adobe stock modified by Blockworks
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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.
Correction, Mar. 5, 2025 at 2:36 pm ET: Usual USD0 was launched with M^0, not Agora AUSD.
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