Sui’s native stablecoin goes live with promise of Treasury yield going back to the network

AI Summary4 min read

TL;DR

Sui's native stablecoin USDsui launched with a unique model where yield from backing assets is returned to the Sui ecosystem through token buybacks and DeFi incentives. This contrasts with traditional stablecoin issuers who keep all yield for themselves.

Key Takeaways

  • Sui Dollar (USDsui) stablecoin launched with yield from backing assets being funneled back into the Sui ecosystem
  • Yield will be used for SUI token buybacks, DeFi protocol deployment, and automated market making incentives
  • Built by former Meta engineers from the abandoned Libra/Diem project, challenging traditional stablecoin business models
  • Bootstrapping is facilitated by existing stablecoin holdings and investor interest in the Sui ecosystem

Tags

SuistablecoinDeFicryptocurrencyblockchain
Mysten Labs co-founders (from left to right): George Danezis (Chief Scientist), Sam Blackshear (CTO), Evan Cheng (CEO), Kostas Kryptos Chalkias (Chief Cryptographer), Adeniyi Abiodun (CPO)
Mysten Labs co-founders (from left to right): George Danezis, Sam Blackshear, Kostas Kryptos Chalkias, Adeniyi Abiodun (Mysten Labs modified by CoinDesk)

What to know:

  • Sui stablecoin yield will be returned to the network through buybacks of the sui token, as well as funds deployed to DeFi and automated market making for incentivizing swaps.
  • The Sui blockchain was built by a group of former Meta engineers involved in the abandoned Libra/Diem digital dollar project.
  • Sui stablecoin yield will be returned to the network through buybacks of the sui token, as well as funds deployed to DeFi and automated market making for incentivizing swaps.
  • The Sui blockchain was built by a group of former Meta engineers involved in the abandoned Libra/Diem digital dollar project.

The Sui Dollar (USDsui), the stablecoin of the Sui blockchain, went live Wednesday with a promise that income from the assets backing the token will be funneled back into the ecosystem from which it sprang.

Yield on the bonds and liquid assets backing USDsui will be used to repurchase and remove SUI$0.9331 tokens from circulation or deployed to decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols and into automated market making for incentivizing swaps, said Adeniyi Abiodun, a co-founder at Mysten Labs, the original contributors to Sui.

Stablecoin growth has been rapid, and the $310 billion market-cap industry led by Tether and Circle Internet (CRCL) is entering the global payments arena. Both companies keep all the yield generated by the masses of U.S. Treasury bonds backing their dollar-pegged tokens, USDT and USDC, respectively.

“I think we are starting to see a dislocation of the business model of stablecoin issuers, whereby the yield is largely kept to external agencies that don't really pour value back to the ecosystem,” said Adeniyi Abiodun, co-founder at Mysten Labs, the original contributors to Sui. “That yield effectively can get funneled back from the foundation straight to the Sui ecosystem."

Plans for the coin, which is issued by Bridge, the stablecoin firm acquired last year by payments giant Stripe, were first announced toward the end of 2025. Sui was built by a group of former Meta engineers who worked on the soial media company's abandoned Libra/Diem digital dollar project.

"Right now those funds do not hit the ecosystem; they really flow out," Abiodun said. "We are all about closing that loop. So it's real yield from real world finance that is going back into DeFi that creates a flywheel.”

Bootstrapping a stablecoin is not such a heavy lift when your network has carried over $1 trillion in stablecoins: the likes of USDT, USDC and other stablecoins, Abiodun said.

“The Sui Foundation actually has USDC and other stablecoins today, and so can transition a lot of that straight to Sui Dollar. Mysten Labs can do the same. On top of that, we actually have a lot of investors and hedge funds who are interested in minting Sui USD. So bootstrapping this is actually very easy,” he said.

Abiodun’s former Facebook colleagues and Libra coin partners are the Mysten Labs co-founders: George Danezis (chief scientist), Sam Blackshear (CTO), Evan Cheng (CEO), Kostas Kryptos Chalkias (chief cryptographer).

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