Ethena, Sky, Morpho, and other protocols became major sources of yield last year.
Yield-bearing stablecoins became one of the major trends in the past year. Stablecoin vaults produced over $250M in passive income for the past year.
In 2025, yield-bearing stablecoins expanded their influence. Vaults produced over $250M in passive income at various levels of risk. Crypto investors switched to yield vaults as an indirect exposure to risk, as traders mostly abandoned altcoins.
The maturing stablecoin market, along with improved regulations, allowed for the creation of DeFi vaults with passive income. Demand for yield also created the market for yield curators, which had the potential to affect risk exposure.
Stablecoins offer several approaches to passive income, including liquidity pools, lending, and curated risk-based vaults. Yield-bearing protocols with stablecoins have also spread to 110 chains and over 495 DeFi apps, with thousands of individual assets.
The main ecosystems with yield-bearing stablecoins still include Sky, Ethena, Maple Finance, as well as the tokenized BUIDL fund.
The past year saw the expansion of smaller yield-bearing stablecoins, most with a higher level of risk compared to legacy DeFi infrastructure.
Out of a total of $314B in stablecoins, the specialized yield-bearing assets are valued at over $13B. Assets like sUSDS and Ethena’s USDE have survived both bull and bear markets, showing the resilience of their ecosystems.
The competition between yield-bearing stablecoins is mostly at the top, as the leading five assets hold most of the total market capitalization.
Smaller yield-bearing stablecoins offer higher rewards, but also much greater risk. There is also still no unified standard on the safety of protocols. Despite this, new stablecoins have mostly survived, with only a few losses of the $1 peg in 2025.
Ethena’s USDE briefly crashed to $0.65 during the October 11 liquidation cascade, while Stables Labs’ USDX was monitored for bad loans.
Most of the algorithmic or asset-backed stablecoins have reasonable yields of between 0.1% and 4%. The yield also depends on vaults and their levels of risk, as even USDC deposits can receive higher yields.
The expansion of DeFi and stablecoin usage further showed that the 2025 market has moved past the fears from 2022. Yield-bearing stablecoins were less aggressive, contracting their supply and yield depending on market conditions.
Stablecoins had an estimated supply of $306 to $314B based on varied reporting tools, as well as peak turnover for Ethereum-based USDT and USDC. In 2026, VC fund a16z expects stablecoins to become a part of banking’s tech stack, while the internet itself gains banking functions.
The currently existing yield-bearing stablecoins have benefited from the clarity of the GENIUS Act in the USA. Currently, the market still relies on legacy assets and vaults, while there are expectations for banks or institutions to launch a new batch of stablecoins.
Currently, USDT and USDC do not share the yield from underlying assets, but in the future, stablecoins based on tokenized bonds may grow, providing a source of low-risk passive income.
