Author: AI Publisher

USDC launched in 2018 as a joint venture between Circle and Coinbase, designed as an institutional-grade regulated stablecoin that could compete with Tether’s USDT. The pitch was simple: every USDC would be backed 1:1 by dollars and short-duration treasuries, audited regularly, and issued by a US-regulated entity. For regulators, corporates, and risk-averse users, USDC was the “safe” stablecoin.

USDC grew rapidly through 2020-2022 as DeFi boomed. It became the preferred stablecoin for Aave deposits, Compound lending, Uniswap LPs, and most serious DeFi activity on Ethereum. At its peak in 2022, USDC had more than $55 billion in supply. Circle was widely expected to IPO at a massive valuation, and USDC looked like the inevitable winner over USDT as the world’s primary onchain dollar.

Then Silicon Valley Bank failed in March 2023. USDC had $3.3 billion of its reserves at SVB, and Circle’s CEO Jeremy Allaire confirmed the exposure in a Friday night tweet. USDC depegged over the weekend, briefly trading at $0.87 before the FDIC announced SVB depositors would be made whole. The episode was traumatic for DeFi — protocols that treated USDC as a dollar equivalent suddenly had to price in bank risk. USDC supply dropped from $55B to $22B over the following year as users migrated to alternatives.

USDC has since recovered to around $45 billion and Circle actually went public in 2025 at a strong valuation. But the depeg event permanently changed how DeFi thinks about stablecoins. No asset is risk-free. “Institutional backing” turned out to mean “exposed to institutional failures.” The lesson wasn’t that USDC was bad — it remains one of the most transparent and well-run stablecoins available — but that all stablecoins carry some systemic risk, and users should understand exactly what they’re holding before treating it as a dollar.

Trade memecoins safely on Memeshot — iOS / Android

Tether launched in 2014 as RealcoinUSD on the Omni Layer on top of Bitcoin, making it one of the oldest stablecoins in existence. Rebranded to USDT shortly after, it became the default trading pair on early crypto exchanges including Bitfinex (owned by Tether’s same parent company, which drove endless “are they the same entity” controversies). By 2017, USDT was the primary way traders moved between crypto and dollar equivalents without touching the banking system.

Tether’s history is controversial. For years, Tether refused to produce a full audit of its reserves, leading to persistent accusations that not every USDT was actually backed by dollars. The New York Attorney General investigated and settled with Tether in 2021, with Tether paying $18.5 million and agreeing to publish attestations. Subsequent attestations showed Tether held a mix of commercial paper, treasuries, Bitcoin, and other assets rather than pure cash. Critics were never fully satisfied, but the peg held.

Despite the controversies, USDT won the stablecoin war decisively in the emerging-market use case. For users in Argentina, Turkey, Nigeria, and dozens of other countries with unstable local currencies, USDT became the default way to hold dollar exposure. It circulated in peer-to-peer markets, powered remittance flows, and served as the underlying asset for more trading volume than any other crypto asset in the world. By 2025, USDT had over $150 billion in supply — bigger than USDC, DAI, and every other stablecoin combined.

USDT’s lesson is that trust in crypto doesn’t always correlate with regulatory cleanliness. Circle has the better reputation with regulators and institutions, but USDT has the users. The thing that matters in a stablecoin is whether it holds its peg, and Tether’s peg has held through every major crisis including Terra, FTX, SVB, and multiple Tether-specific FUD waves. Whatever one thinks of the company, USDT delivered on its core promise — a dollar-equivalent token that can move globally 24/7 — and that’s why it won.

Trade memecoins safely on Memeshot — iOS / Android

Jupiter launched its perpetuals product in late 2023, almost as an afterthought to its dominant DEX aggregation business. Built on a pool-based design similar to GMX’s GLP, Jupiter Perps let users trade ETH, BTC, and SOL perpetuals on Solana with leverage up to 100x, trading against a JLP pool composed of multiple assets. The UX was integrated directly into the main Jupiter interface — one click from swapping to trading leveraged positions.

The growth was immediate and enormous. Jupiter’s existing user base of millions of traders discovered perps without needing to learn a new platform. By mid-2024, Jupiter Perps was doing over $1 billion in daily volume, competing directly with Hyperliquid as the top decentralized perp venue. The JLP pool, which let users provide liquidity and earn fees, became one of the most popular yield products on Solana with APYs regularly in the 30%+ range.

Jupiter Perps’ success was a masterclass in distribution. The protocol didn’t need to bootstrap users — it already had them. It didn’t need to explain what it did — users already trusted Jupiter. It just needed to ship a functioning perps product, and the existing user base provided instant liquidity and volume. Within six months it was the largest perp venue on Solana.

The broader lesson is that in 2024 crypto, distribution trumps almost everything. Hyperliquid won by having better product. Jupiter Perps won by having the audience. Both are valid paths, but they tell founders different things: if you can’t beat an incumbent on product, you need to own a related audience. Jupiter’s expansion from aggregator to perp venue to launchpad to mobile app follows the Amazon playbook: dominate one layer, then use that dominance to expand into adjacent categories. It works in crypto too, and Jupiter is proving it faster than almost anyone.

Trade memecoins safely on Memeshot — iOS / Android

Aerodrome launched on Base in August 2023, forked from Velodrome which had dominated Optimism’s DEX category. The design — a ve(3,3) AMM with concentrated liquidity and incentivized vote escrow — was elegant but not novel. What made Aerodrome interesting was timing: it launched just as Base was becoming the fastest-growing L2 in crypto, and it positioned itself as the native liquidity hub for the entire Base ecosystem.

The strategy worked extraordinarily well. Within six months of launch, Aerodrome had over $1 billion in TVL and was processing billions of dollars in weekly volume, making it one of the top DEXs on any chain. Its AERO token became one of the best-performing DeFi tokens of 2024, running from around $0.10 to over $2 as Base grew. Vote-locking AERO for veAERO (vote-escrowed AERO) gave users control over emissions direction and became a key strategic tool for project marketing on Base.

What Aerodrome understood, and what most protocols missed, is that ecosystem-aligned positioning matters more than raw product differentiation on new chains. Base had Coinbase’s distribution, a fast-growing user base, and a clean slate. Aerodrome became the “official” DEX for Base in the minds of users — not because Coinbase endorsed it, but because it was there first, it worked well, and it committed fully to the chain. By the time competitors tried to move in, Aerodrome had captured the network effects.

The Aerodrome story is a lesson for founders in 2025: picking the right chain and committing early matters as much as picking the right product. The same team deploying the same code on three different chains will get three different outcomes. Aerodrome happened to pick Base right before it exploded, and that single decision compounded into dominance. Whether that can be replicated on the next hot chain is the question every DeFi team is trying to answer.

Trade memecoins safely on Memeshot — iOS / Android

MakerDAO launched DAI in December 2017, making it the first truly decentralized stablecoin pegged to the US dollar. Founded by Rune Christensen, a Danish entrepreneur, Maker used a crypto-collateralized debt position (CDP) model: users locked ETH in a smart contract and minted DAI against it. If ETH fell, the position could be liquidated. The system was complex but it worked — DAI held its peg through the 2018 crypto winter when almost everything else collapsed.

Maker evolved over time. Multi-collateral DAI in 2019 added other assets beyond ETH. USDC was later accepted as collateral during the COVID crash, which was controversial because it partially centralized what was supposed to be a decentralized stablecoin. Real-world assets (treasuries, corporate bonds) were later added to back DAI, generating significant yield but further muddying the “decentralized” narrative. At its peak, DAI had a $10B+ market cap and was the backbone of dozens of DeFi protocols.

In 2024, Rune pushed through the Endgame plan — a sweeping rebrand that replaced DAI with USDS and MKR with SKY, introducing a tiered governance structure called SubDAOs. The community was bitterly divided. Some saw it as a necessary evolution. Others saw it as Rune concentrating power and abandoning the values that made Maker matter in the first place. Several prominent community members publicly exited over the changes.

Whatever one thinks of the Endgame plan, MakerDAO’s historical importance is secure. DAI proved that decentralized stablecoins could work. It survived multiple market crashes. It onboarded more users to DeFi than almost any other protocol. And it set the template for how algorithmic monetary systems could operate in a permissionless environment. Every subsequent stablecoin project — from LUSD to FRAX to USDe — owes a conceptual debt to Maker, even when they explicitly position themselves as alternatives to it.

Trade memecoins safely on Memeshot — iOS / Android

Ethena launched in 2024 with an audacious pitch: a “synthetic dollar” called USDe that was neither fully backed by real dollars nor algorithmically pegged. Instead, Ethena used a delta-neutral hedging strategy. User deposits went into ETH or liquid-staking tokens, and Ethena shorted an equivalent amount of ETH perpetual futures on centralized exchanges. The net position was dollar-neutral, and the funding rate on the short position became yield for USDe holders.

The model was mocked on launch as “Terra with extra steps.” Critics pointed out that funding rates could go negative, centralized exchanges could go bust, and the strategy depended on perpetual bull-market-like conditions to sustain yield. Founder Guy Young kept shipping anyway. USDe launched in February 2024 and grew to over $3 billion in supply within months, with yields on sUSDe (staked USDe) regularly exceeding 20% during the memecoin bull run.

The ENA token launched in April 2024, airdropping to early depositors and points-program participants. It became one of the highest-performing DeFi airdrops of the cycle. By late 2024, Ethena had integrated with major protocols across chains, launched USDtb (a Treasury-backed alternative), and expanded into more complex yield strategies. The founder thesis — that dollar-denominated yield products are the most-wanted thing in crypto — was clearly being validated.

Ethena is the most interesting stablecoin experiment since Terra, partly because the comparison is uncomfortable. Both projects promise high yields on a dollar-like asset. Both have complex backing models most users don’t fully understand. Both depend on market conditions holding. The difference is that Ethena’s backing is legible, its hedging is transparent, and its weaknesses are public. Whether that’s enough to avoid Terra’s fate depends on how the next bear market plays out. Until then, USDe is the biggest innovation in the stablecoin category in years.

Trade memecoins safely on Memeshot — iOS / Android