USDS

USDS is a US dollar stablecoin issued by the Sky ecosystem, the decentralized finance protocol formerly known as MakerDAO. It is designed to hold a soft peg to the U.S. dollar, meaning its value is engineered to stay close to $1, and it serves as a core building block for lending, saving, and payments across decentralized finance (DeFi).

USDS emerged from one of the longest-running projects in DeFi. MakerDAO, the organization behind the DAI stablecoin, rebranded its ecosystem as Sky in 2024 and introduced USDS as an upgraded stablecoin alongside the SKY governance token. Holders of DAI can upgrade to USDS, and the two assets coexist within the broader Sky ecosystem.

How USDS works

Rather than being minted by a single company against a bank account, USDS is issued by a decentralized protocol governed by token holders. Users can put USDS to work within the protocol's modules: converting it into sUSDS routes a share of protocol revenue to the holder as a savings rate, and USDS can also be used to participate in the wider Sky ecosystem, including semi-autonomous projects called "Sky Stars" that extend the stablecoin into specialized areas such as institutional credit and advanced lending.

USDS has no fixed maximum supply. Like other stablecoins, its supply expands and contracts with demand — tokens are created when value enters the system and removed when it is redeemed. Roughly 9.8 billion USDS are in circulation, and the token is available on multiple networks including Ethereum, Solana, Arbitrum, and Base.

Within the DeFi ecosystem, USDS functions as a stable unit of account and a source of yield: a dollar-denominated asset that can move peer-to-peer without intermediaries while offering holders the option to earn interest generated by the protocol itself.