Usual USD

USD0 is a dollar stablecoin issued by the Usual protocol and backed one-to-one by real-world assets, primarily short-term US Treasury bills held through tokenized instruments. It is designed as a fully collateralized alternative to bank-deposit-backed stablecoins, with reserves visible on chain rather than disclosed in periodic attestations alone.

The distinguishing feature of the Usual model is how the yield from those Treasury holdings is handled. Most fiat-backed stablecoin issuers keep the interest earned on reserves as company revenue. Usual instead directs that value into its protocol and distributes it to participants through its USUAL token, on the argument that the people providing the deposits should capture the yield those deposits generate.

Structure

USD0 itself is the stability asset and does not pay yield directly. Holders who want yield can lock USD0 into USD0++, a longer-duration version that accrues rewards but carries redemption terms different from the base token. That distinction is important: the two are not interchangeable, and the exit conditions for the yield-bearing version have been a source of confusion and volatility in the past.

USD0 has no fixed maximum supply, with roughly 551 million tokens outstanding. It is available on Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, and BNB Chain.

Considerations

Because USD0 is backed by tokenized Treasury products rather than by cash directly, the peg depends on the reliability of those underlying tokenized instruments and their issuers as well as on Usual's own mechanisms. Anyone considering it should read the protocol documentation on what specific assets sit in reserve and on the exact redemption process for both USD0 and its yield-bearing variant.