In brief
- Solana DEX aggregator Jupiter has tapped Ethean to launch its own stablecoin.
- JupUSD is expected to launch in Q4 and will initially be collateralized by USDtb, Ethena’s short-term treasury-backed stablecoin.
- The total stablecoin market cap has grown by more than 75% in the last year and now sits above $300 billion.
Jupiter, a popular decentralized exchange aggregator and DeFi platform on the Solana network, is launching its own stablecoin—JupUSD—together with stablecoin issuer Ethena.
Expected to launch sometime in Q4, JupUSD will initially be fully collateralized by Ethena’s USDtb, a product which is itself blacked by BlackRock’s BUIDL, a tokenized fund that represents investments in short-term U.S. treasuries. Later, Ethena’s flagship stablecoin USDe—the third largest stablecoin on the market next to Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC—will be added as collateral.
“Jupiter aims to serve every person on this planet using DeFi rails,” said Jupiter Chief Operating Officer Kash Dhanda in a release video for the stablecoin. “Stablecoins are a critical component of that.”
DeFi, a multi-billion-dollar sector, refers to the collection of financial applications that allow their users to transact natively on blockchain networks, without third-party intermediaries. Stablecoins, which largely function as digital dollar equivalents, enable crypto traders to enter and exit positions in markets where dollars are restricted or inaccessible—such as DeFi markets.
Jupiter aims to usher JupUSD into all facets of its growing DeFi stack, including as collateral for perpetual futures trading, liquidity in its lending protocol, and for trading via its swap products on desktop and mobile. Jupiter is by far the largest DEX aggregator on Solana, notching close to $20 billion in trading volume in the last 30 days and $1.2 million in revenue in the last 24 hours, per DefiLlama.
Contracts for the mint and issuance of JupUSD are currently being built and prepared for audits ahead of launch.
“We’re always trying to work with winners across the entire space,” said Ethena founder Guy Young in the release’s promotional video. “For us it was a very obvious candidate for the first stablecoin partnership that we have within Solana.”
Ethena’s core stablecoin products USDe and USDtb make up just more than 5% of the total stablecoin market cap, which has ballooned to more than $303 billion at the time of writing. That marks a jump of around 75% from its $173 billion market cap at this time last year.
Stablecoins, which are often backed 1:1 with fiat currencies like the U.S. dollar, earned a major victory earlier this year with the passing of the GENIUS Act, which provides a regulatory framework for their trading and issuance.
In February, experts told Decrypt that the passing of legislation could lead to 1,000s of stablecoin products from notable companies.
That trend has started to accelerate.
Recently, crypto wallets like MetaMask and Phantom have unveiled their own stablecoin products. Firms like Amazon, Walmart, and Expedia have mulled the proposition as well, according to a June report from the Wall Street Journal.
Representatives for Jupiter and Ethena did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s request for comment.
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