From theblock by Daniel Kuhn

Venture wings for crypto exchanges Binance and Kraken led a $10 million Series A funding round for Usual, the fast-growing stablecoin startup, according to a statement on Monday. 

Other backers include Ethena, the synthetic dollar platform; Ondo, the firm specializing in real-world assets; and Echo, a decentralized crowdfunding platform founded by crypto luminary Jordan Fish (widely known as Cobie), along with several other notable investors.

M^0 onchain stablecoin infrastructure firm that inked a deal with Usual last week to help expand its backing assets has also joined as a backer. 

Launched “out of stealth” in early 2024, Usual offers a fully compliant stablecoin called USD0 backed 1:1 by real-world assets, primarily U.S. Treasurys. Its founder, Pierre Person, is the former vice president of the presidential political party that spearheaded France’s crypto asset legislation and ​​ex-member of the French Parliament.

USD0 crossed the $1 billion market capitalization milestone last week and is on its way to $1.5 billion in a matter of days, according to CoinGecko data. It is the seventh-largest stablecoin by market cap and sixth most-traded by volume. 

The protocol, governed by the USUAL token, is designed to reward holders with real yields generated by these reserve holdings — unlike the two largest stablecoins, USDT and USDC, which direct profits to their issuers, Tether and Circle, respectively. USD0 projects an 80% annualized yield.

"Existing stablecoin models lack transparency and equitable value distribution, privatizing their gains and socializing their losses, and going against the ethos that web3 was built on,” Usual CEO Person said in a statement.

The USD0++ protocol also allows users to stake their USD0 holdings for up to four years to earn rewards in USUAL. Usual sometimes compares USD0++ to a short-term T-Bill in that it offers a right to future earnings of the protocol.

USUAL is up about 11% in the past 24 hours.