Take stock of the development of on-chain national debt in Ondo, Matrixdock, Maple, OpenEden, and MakerDAO.
By Jiang Haibo
On Thursday of this week, MakerDAO decided to establish a real-world asset (RWA) Vault named BlockTower Andromeda through a nominal survey vote. The Vault will be managed by BlockTower Capital and is expected to invest up to $1.28 billion in short-term US government bonds.
US government bond yields are usually regarded as risk-free rates by the capital market. As US short-term interest rates continue to rise, DeFi rates fall, and the demand for on-chain stablecoins to obtain income through off-chain markets increases. This direction has indeed seen rapid development since this year. Below, BlockingNews will take stock of the development status of several major on-chain national debt projects.
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Ondo Finance
Ondo Finance announced the launch of tokenized funds in January of this year, bringing risk-free rates to the chain and allowing stablecoin holders to invest in bonds and US government bonds. According to DeFiLlama, as of June 1, Ondo’s TVL was $100 million, down from $138 million in late May.
Ondo currently offers four bond funds: US Money Market Fund (OMMF), Short-term US Government Bond Fund (OUSG), Short-term Investment Grade Bond Fund (OSTB), and High-yield Corporate Bond Fund (OHYG). Investors invest with USDC, and Ondo charges a 0.15% fund management fee, up to 0.15% intermediary fee, and up to 0.48% ETF management fee.
OUSG is the most popular fund among investors. According to the description, the fund holds the most iShares Short Tearsury Bond ETF, with a trading code of SHV on the NASDAQ, and an average annualized return of about 4.92% over 30 days. After investing in OUSG, investors can also mortgage OUSG through Flux Finance and borrow stablecoins such as USDC and DAI. As of June 1, the total deposit in Flux was $67.49 million, and the total borrowings were $25.92 million.
Ondo’s funds are only open to qualified buyers, and if a fund has only qualified buyers, it can be exempted from registering as an investment company with the US SEC under the 1940 Investment Company Act. Please note that the concepts of qualified buyers and accredited investors are not the same, and the threshold for the former is higher. For example, for individuals, qualified buyers need to have investments of $5 million or more, while the latter only requires an annual income of over $200,000 or net assets of over $1 million excluding their primary residence.
Related reading: Can stablecoins also buy US bonds? Ondo Finance launches tokenized fund for US bonds and bonds
Matrixdock and Tprotocol
Matrixdock is a bond platform launched by asset management company Matrixport. It also launched bond-related businesses in late January this year. According to the dashboard of Dune@hankofdefi, the TVL of Matrixdock is currently US$72.44 million.
The first product of Matrixdock is STBT. Investors cast USDC, USDT, or DAI into Matrixdock address from whitelist address to mint STBT. Only qualified investors who have passed KYC can invest in Matrixdock’s products, and STBT can only be transferred between whitelist users.
As a result, another project called TProtocol was born, which can be understood as an unlicensed version of Matrixdock that allows retail investors to access the product. Although the official website indicates that the United States or other sanctioned areas cannot be used, KYC is not actually required for use. Users can cast TBT with USDC in TProtocol, and the underlying asset is Matrixdock’s STBT. TBT is a rebase token that can always be redeemed for USDC worth 1 USD, and returns are distributed through rebase. TBT can be packaged as an interest-bearing asset wTBT and participate in various DeFi activities in the case of receiving bond income, and can be used for liquidity mining on DEXs such as Optimism’s Velodrome and zkSync’s veSync. Currently, the TVL of TProtocol is US$5.3 million.
TProtocol is currently undergoing a 6-epoch launch period, with each epoch lasting 14 days. Users holding TBT or wTBT can participate and will be allocated 2% of the total governance token TPS airdropped at the end.
OpenEden
OpenEden, created by former Gemini employees, launched tokenized US bonds in April this year. Stablecoin holders can cast TBILL through OpenEden TBILL Vault to obtain risk-free returns on US bonds.
The investment manager of OpenEden TBILL Vault is OpenEden Pte Ltd, which is regulated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore and publishes reserve reports daily. The issuer of TBILL tokens is professional fund company Hill Lights International Ltd, which holds US bonds through a special purpose company.
Currently, the funds in OpenEden TBILL VAULT are US$5.5 million, and the yield is about 5.32%. Participation in OpenEden TBILL Vault also requires KYC to be completed first. Only non-US professional investors and US qualified investors defined by the Securities and Investment Business Act of the British Virgin Islands in 2010 can participate in the project after passing KYC.
Maple’s Cash Management Pool
Maple used to be a project focused on unsecured loans, but last year, important customers such as Alameda Research went bankrupt, resulting in a large number of bad debts and serious capital outflows.
In April of this year, Maple introduced a new liquidity pool – the cash management pool. Crypto hedge funds and bond trading experts Room40 Capital established an independent special purpose vehicle (SPV) as the sole borrower of the cash management pool. The resulting funds will all be invested in U.S. short-term Treasury bills. Maple and Room40 Capital together receive a management fee of 0.5%, with the remaining profits distributed to depositors. Only non-U.S. qualified investors who have undergone KYC can participate.
The current deposit in the cash management pool is 4.26 million U.S. dollars, all of which is invested in short-term Treasury bills and overnight reverse repurchase agreements of 1-14 days. The annualized rate of return for depositors is 5.17%.
MakerDAO’s RWA and DSR
MakerDAO plans to add a new parameter – the base rate – in its recent update, which will be calculated based on the 3-month U.S. Treasury bill yield and the average stablecoin yield.
Currently, MakerDAO has initiated a discussion on changing the parameters in the forum. As of May 30, the yield on 3-month U.S. Treasury bills was 5.55%, and the yield on stablecoins was 0.47%, resulting in a base rate of 4.09% and a DSR (DAI savings rate) of 3.49%. If approved, the interest rate for borrowing DAI against assets such as ETH and wstETH will also be significantly higher than the new DSR.
If the final vote passes, MakerDAO’s competitiveness in borrowing stablecoins against assets such as ETH may weaken, and the interest rate may be higher than that of lending protocols such as Aave. However, for DAI holders, this may be a major benefit. Previously, the DSR was 1%, and MakerDAO earned revenue through RWA and other methods and distributed part of the revenue to the DSR. Users holding DAI can deposit it into the DSR contract to earn an annualized rate of return of 1%. If the DSR is directly increased from 1% to 3.49%, this may greatly increase the attractiveness of DAI, and users may be more willing to exchange other stablecoins for DAI through PSM and other methods to obtain the DSR rate of return. MakerDAO can also obtain more revenue from RWA.
According to Dune@steakhouse’s dashboard, MakerDAO’s investment in RWA has exceeded $1.3 billion, the majority of which has been invested in highly liquid bonds. The proportion of RWA’s revenue has also risen to 65.9%. With the continuous introduction of new RWA Vaults, this proportion may continue to increase.
If the above proposal is passed in the voting process, MakerDAO will be closer and closer to a project that raises stablecoins on the chain, invests in bonds off the chain, and distributes the revenue to DAI holders.
Summary
The representative projects that obtain off-chain revenue through U.S. Treasury bonds have made great progress this year, except for MakerDAO, all of which have officially launched related businesses only this year, indicating that this direction is developing rapidly.
In compliance, only TProtocol and MakerDAO do not need to verify as qualified investors to participate. TProtocol’s packaging method may also face significant legal risks.
MakerDAO, with a larger volume and longer development time, is more trustworthy. If the DSR is adjusted to 3.49%, it may greatly increase the attractiveness of DAI, but it will reduce its competitiveness in crypto collateralized lending.
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