Stablecoin yield has not disappeared.

What disappeared is undisciplined yield.

I ran stablecoin yield through @Infinit_Labs Intelligence and removed leverage loops, emissions, and experimental protocols.
What’s left isn’t farming. It’s credit and fee markets, expressed onchain.

— 📌 Private Credit Is the Core Yield Source

The highest stablecoin yields currently available are coming from onchain private credit, where yield is paid directly by borrowers.

The clearest concentration appears on Wildcat Protocol.

Across multiple $USDC and $USDT lending markets on Ethereum, Wildcat is offering yields between 12% and 16% APY, backed by borrower interest:

• HYPERWILDCATUSDT — 16% APY, $9.9M TVL

• HYPERPRIVATEUSDC — 15% APY, $30.0M TVL

• HYPERWILDCATUSDC — 14.5% APY (15.1% 30-day avg)

• Additional markets cluster at 12–13% APY with $10–13M TVL

The signal is consistency.
Yield persists because borrowers are paying for capital. There are no emissions supporting returns.

— 📌 Fee-Backed Trading Vaults

The second viable source of stablecoin yield comes from protocol fees, not lending.

The Gains Network $USDC vault currently yields 13.25% APY with $12.0M in TVL, available on @arbitrum and @base.

Here, yield is generated from trading activity. Liquidity earns when traders trade.
The trade-off is exposure to volume cycles rather than borrower credit risk.

— 📌 Structured Credit Vaults

Some users prefer credit exposure without managing individual lending markets.

Upshift offers a $USDC vault yielding 13.15% APY with $15.2M in TVL. The underlying exposure is credit-based, packaged behind a single vault.

The trade-off is reliance on the platform’s credit framework.

— 📌 Conclusion

Stablecoin yield is real, but concentrated.

When filtered by real revenue and risk discipline, viable strategies cluster around private credit lending and fee-backed vaults, with APYs between 12% and 16%.

When you ask who actually pays the yield, stablecoin farming stops looking like DeFi and starts looking like capital markets.