The Rise of Yield Stablecoins

Author: jacek, co-founder of stablewatch; Translator: Jinse Finance xiaozou

Yield-bearing stablecoins are showing a vigorous growth trend. This can be seen from various metrics tracked by stablewatch: the total market value of yield-bearing stablecoins, the number of such products launched in the past few months, and the total returns paid to users.

Let's dive deep into this data.

1. Market Capitalization of Interest-Bearing Stablecoins

In less than two years, the total supply of interest-bearing stablecoins has increased by 13 times, from $666 million in August 2023 to $8.98 billion in May 2025. It reached a historical peak of $10.8 billion in February this year and has since stabilized:

Compared to payment-focused stablecoins, yield-focused stablecoins currently only account for a small portion of the entire stablecoin market (3.7%) (as of now, the market cap of yield-focused stablecoins is 8.98 billion USD out of a total market cap of 242.47 billion USD):

2. How many types of existing interest-bearing stablecoins are there?

Currently, we track over 30 interest-bearing stablecoins on stablewatch, but there are actually more than 100 on the list, with new varieties continuously emerging that keep us on our toes. It is important to note that there is no widely accepted definition of interest-bearing stablecoins, so the statistical results depend on the classification criteria (see details below). The chart below shows the market value distribution of various interest-bearing stablecoins:

It is evident that the number of yield-bearing stablecoins is rapidly increasing, and many newly launched yield-bearing stablecoins are currently gaining market attention. Let's take another look at the same chart (excluding the top six yield-bearing stablecoins by current market capitalization and focusing the time range on the last 12 months):

As expected, the sUSDE issued by Ethena and the pioneers in this field, Sky (sUSDS and sDAI), dominate the market, accounting for a total of 57% ($5.13 billion) of the market capitalization of interest-bearing stablecoins.

3. Profit Payment (YPO)

Since mid-2023, interest-bearing stablecoins have paid out nearly $600 million in earnings:

It should be noted that the YPO indicator, pioneered by stablewatch, is still in its early stages and has not yet tracked the multiple correlations between interest-bearing stablecoins. Nevertheless, this indicator provides a valuable overview for assessing the importance of interest-bearing stablecoins as an asset class.

4. What exactly is a yield stablecoin?

Currently, there is no unified definition for yield-bearing stablecoins in the industry. As I mentioned earlier in other related articles, this is an extremely broad and diverse category that includes tokenized yield strategies, quasi-hedge fund structures, simple asset (such as government bonds) wrapping tools, yield lending certificates, multi-strategy yield aggregators, and more. Possible classification dimensions include:

• Source of Income
• Profit distribution mechanism
• Peg Maintenance Mechanism
• Reserve Asset Type
• Custody Arrangements
• Regulatory Status
• Liquidity characteristics and redemption channels and frequency
• Governance Model
• Risk Concentration
• Target user group
• Underlying infrastructure (blockchain) support, etc.

This emerging phenomenon still requires more research to clarify. Even if future interest-bearing stablecoins may deconstruct into several clearer subcategories, an in-depth analysis of their economic models, technical architectures, and applicable rules will help users make more informed decisions and maintain market integrity.