Author: Abdul; Compiled by: Block unicorn

In the past year, stablecoin issuance has increased by $100 billion, and is expected to grow 10 times in the coming years. With major players in traditional finance (TradFi) entering this field, many are still uncertain about how to seize this opportunity.

As demand grows, all types of stablecoins will expand—whether it is centralized issuers like Tether and Circle, or decentralized protocols like Ethena and MakerDAO.

Tether has been the biggest winner in history, accounting for 60% of all stablecoin offerings (via USDT). In 2024 alone, it made $13 billion in profits. But since Tether is a private company, there is no direct investment path. Fortunately, many other issuers have tradable tokens.

At the same time, some of the world's largest financial institutions and are also betting on stablecoins. Trump's stablecoin strategy could provide a major boost to the industry this year. If this momentum continues, 2025 could be the most important year in stablecoins’ history.

Even Tether's CEO (Paolo) is looking forward to the stablecoin war in 2025. Now it's time to make a position accordingly.

You can directly obtain stablecoin growth through issuers with tradable tokens, or indirectly obtain growth through protocols that benefit from stablecoin adoption.

The most obvious way to reach stablecoins to grow is through some issuers with active tokens. Below, I will review some of the key players.

Ethena

Ethena issues USDe, which is the largest synthetic income stablecoin. It is built on assets like Bitcoin and Ethereumdelta neutral positions to mint USDe, generating gains from pledge rewards and perpetual capital rates.

USDe has a circulation of approximately US$7 billion, an increase of 350% year-on-year, and Ethena has become an important player in the stablecoin field. Its native token, $ENA, is both a practical token and a governance token in the ecosystem.

Sky (formerly Maker)

Sky (formerly Maker) is one of the oldest protocols in DeFi and the issuer of USDS (formerly DAI), the largest CDP-based stablecoin. While the supply of DAI is moving to USDS, the protocol currently has a total issuance of $8.5 billion. Its governance token $MKR is used for protocol governance.

Ondo

Ondo Finance is a leading real-world asset (RWA) tokenization platform focusing on introducing traditional financial assets to the chain. Its stablecoin product, USDY, is a tokenized representative of U.S. Treasury bonds, aiming to provide profitable and fully supported digital dollars.

USDY grew rapidly, with circulation of approximately US$600 million, an increase of 1,000% year-on-year. Ondo is located at the intersection of traditional finance and DeFi, making it one of the key players in the RWA field.

Ondo's native token $ONDO plays a role in governance and protocol incentives, aligning token holders with the platform's long-term growth.

Frax

Frax Finance is the issuer of the FRAX stablecoin, which was originally partly algorithmic, but later turned into a security guaranteed by RWA and crypto assets.

This protocol extends its stablecoin product through sFRAX, a yield-based FRAX version backed by Treasury bonds, making it a significant player in the on-chain RWA field. With over $1 billion in issuance, Frax remains one of the most innovative decentralized stablecoin issuers.

Its governance token $FXS accumulates value through protocol revenue and governance rights, aligns holders with Frax's long-term growth.

As the stablecoin war intensifies later this year, competition to build basic liquidity will drive more activity to the largest stablecoin use cases in DeFi. Here are some less obvious projects that benefit from stablecoin growth.

Aave

Aave is DeFi The largest lending protocol in the country, which will significantly benefit as stablecoins adoption increases, as stablecoins are the backbone of the lending market. Higher stablecoin issuance means more liquidity flows into Aave’s pool, thereby reducing borrowing costs, increasing deposit yields, and increasing protocol revenue through interest rate spreads.

In addition, as competition among stablecoin issuers intensifies, many issuers will provide incentives to deepen liquidity and further drive Aave’s usage. With its multi-chain presence and dominance in DeFi lending, Aave has the ability to capture a surge in lending activity driven by stablecoin expansion.

$AAVE is a native governance token for the Aave protocol.

Extra Benefits: Aave also directly benefits from stablecoin demand through its stablecoin GHO, which has issued a $200 million GHO, up 50% since the beginning of the year.

Curve

Curve is also a key player in DeFi, and its success is closely related to the rise of stablecoins. As the preferred decentralized exchange for stablecoin exchange, Curve will benefit greatly from the surge in stablecoin adoption. As stablecoins account for a large part of its liquidity pool, the increase in issuance will directly increase Curve’s TVL (Total locked value), also improves the efficiency of the platform and reduces trading slippage. This leads to more transaction volume and more fees, thereby increasing the revenue of the protocol.

$CRV is Curve's native governance token, whose value benefits from the increase in platform usage.

Extra Benefits: CurveIt also launched its own native stablecoin crvUSD, which provides additional exposure to the growth of stablecoin demand while providing additional incentives for liquidity providers.

Pendle

Pendle is a DeFi protocol for tokenized income assets that allows users to separate principal and income for more efficient transactions and optimizations. As stablecoin adoption grows, Pendle benefits by unlocking more liquidity for stablecoins, thereby driving more transaction volume and higher protocol revenue.

As the demand for stablecoins increases, Pendle's model will occupy a larger share in the DeFi market, providing users with the ability to maximize stablecoin returns. $PENDLE is its native governance token that benefits from this expansion.

Morpho

Morpho is an agreement that enhances decentralized lending by optimizing interest rates and liquidity. As stablecoin adoption grows, Morpho will benefit from increased demand for lending, which brings liquidity into its pool, providing better interest rates for borrowers and lenders.

Morpho's unique model will become more attractive as more stablecoin liquidity flows into the DeFi space. $MORPHO is Morpho's governance token.

Fluid

Fluid (formerly Instadapp) is a DeFi platform that integrates lending and trading functions to improve capital efficiency. Its innovative “Smart Collateral” and “Smart Debt” features allow users to use assets simultaneously as loan collateral and transaction liquidity while earning fees for borrowing and transactions.

By providing seamless integration between borrowing and trading, Fluid attracts more stablecoin liquidity, thereby reducing borrowing costs and increasing user returns. The Fluid protocol is governed by its native token, $FLUID.

Specially mentioned: Tron

If Tron ($TRX) is not mentioned, this cannot be endedpart. Tron Blockchain holds 50% of USDT circulation. Last month, Tron incurred more than $50 million in fees through stablecoin transfer activities.

Stablecoins are considered to be killer use cases for cryptocurrencies, but since the largest stablecoin issuer (Tether) is a private company, most people are not involved in the field. Hopefully this article provides you with some ideas on how to position the explosive growth of stablecoins in the future.