The Optimist #61

Defi on 🔵Base

I’ve been missing you guys. It seems that doing what I love finally pulled me back in, so I’m really happy to publish this new edition of The Optimist.

If you missed the previous newsletter, it’s just one click away from you HERE.

As you know, I’m still a big believer in both the stablecoin and Coinbase narratives. And when those two worlds collide, it’s hard not to get excited — so of course I had to share the alpha with you.

This week, I’m covering USD.AI, an RWA-backed stablecoin launching on Base following an investment from Coinbase Ventures investment. In this article, I’ll walk you through everything you need to position yourself (token sale, airdrop, yield opportunities, and more).

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🔵 USD.AI

USD.AI lets DeFi users earn real yield by financing AI infrastructure — mainly NVIDIA GPUs. So how does USD.AI actually work?

USD.AI surfs on three of the hottest narratives right now: stablecoins, RWAs, and artificial intelligence. Let’s dig deeper into the project — and understand why Coinbase decided to invest.

1. RWA STABLECOIN

The stablecoin meta is still ongoing — with clear pros (more regulated assets, higher yields, stronger composability) but also cons (crowded market, uneven transparency, and occasional drama like X Stream Finance).
According to Stablewatch stablecoin landscape report, there are two main stablecoin categories:

• Non-yielding payment stablecoins used purely for utility
• Yield-bearing stablecoins (YBS), which operate more like investment assets

Inside this second category, Stablewatch highlights three sub-types. USD.AI’s ecosystem fills into one of them:

• sUSDai sits in the RWA-backed yield-bearing stablecoin category

According to rwa.xyz, USDai is currently the #15 stablecoin with a market cap of 580m. The minting cap is temporarily maxed out but scheduled to lift to 830m on 19/11/2025.

So what’s backing USDai and sUSDai?

• USDai: Fully backed by T-Bills. It earns no yield, but it can be used freely across DeFi. Instant redemption.

• sUSDai: Backed by a mix of T-Bills and private loans extended to GPU operators. This one does earn yield from both components. Redemptions take 30 days. All operator loans are collateralized by GPUs.

  Here’s the proof-of-reserve directly from USD.AI’s website:

Right now, USDai is 99% T-Bill backed. As GPU-related loans expand, that allocation will gradually shift, which is what powers higher yields for sUSDai holders.

One key detail: USDai can always be redeemed instantly as long as the amount of un-staked USDai matches the T-Bill reserves. That means the majority of risk sits with sUSDai holders, not USDai minters.

Depeg risk is therefore extremely low.

2. Artificial Intelligence

We’ve been seeing some unreal investment rounds in the AI sector. Everyone knows we’re in a massive AI bubble — but as long as the music plays, the dance floor stays full.

Some of these partnerships dwarf NVIDIA’s own treasury. The demand for compute has become so intense that GPU operators constantly need new working capital to expand their clusters.

This is where USD.AI fits perfectly: More AI demand → more GPUs → more operators borrowing → more yield flowing to sUSDai holders.

AI growth directly increases borrowing volume, and therefore supports higher, sustainable yields for sUSDai

3. Coinbase Ecosystem

Coinbase’s track record in DeFi has been consistently strong — almost every ecosystem bet they’ve made has aged well. This is honestly what caught my attention first.

I’m not as early as some, but once a project enters the Coinbase distribution funnel, that alone becomes a major catalyst.

USD.AI has raised 17.4m since August 2025, plus two additional rounds from YZi Labs (ex-Binance Labs) and Coinbase Ventures, both undisclosed. Usually, these two latest investors are good catalysts price wise.

After the Coinbase announcement, USD.AI revealed a five-day rollout into the Base ecosystem:

Day 1: CB Ventures investment (undisclosed amount)

Day 2: USD.AI deployment on Base → Cap raised from 580m$ to 830m$

Day 3: $USDai & $sUSDai will be deployed on Base integrated in top-tiers Base protocols

Day 4: Integration of USD.AI into Coinbase Institution / Prime as custodial intermediary

Day 5: USD.AI is adopting the x402 framework for global payment solution

4. DEFI

Now that we’ve covered the fundamentals, let’s go through the practical part:
How to get USDai, how to stake, where to farm, and what risks to understand.

4.1 How to get $USDai

1. If the cap is not reached: buy directly on the USD.AI website https://app.usd.ai/buy (tiny 0.01% fee + bridge fees) - It may take up to 3 days to receive tokens.

   

2. If the cap is full: buy USDai on Aerodrome, or acquire it on Plasma/Arbitrum and bridge it to Base using USD.AI bridge (no slippage across chains thanks since bridge is powered by Layer Zero): https://app.usd.ai/bridge

3. To stake and earn sUSDai (the yield-bearing version), use the staking page. Mind the 30-day unbonding. https://app.usd.ai/stake

4.2 Yield farms

The native yield of sUSDai is ~12% APY — making it one of the strongest yield-bearing stablecoins today (yellow curve below show the average yield across all Yield Bearing Stablecoins, while the black curve is the $BUILD yield (based on t-bills from Blackrock):

But where does the yield come from?

100% of USDai is deployed into T-Bills earning ~3.6%
Only ~30% of USDai is staked as sUSDai
So yield is concentrated: 100/30 × 3.6% ≈ 12% APY

=> GPU operator credit lines expand, sUSDai yields should rise accordingly.

USD.AI integrations:

• Aerodrome: USDai/USDC and sUSDai/USDC pools

• Fluid: Smart Collateral - Smart Debt looping for USDai/USDC pool

• Spectra (pendle fork)

• Extra Finance: Leverage Yield Farming of Aerodrome LP

4.3 ICO & Airdrop

Depositing into USD.AI earns ALLO points, which determine your eligibility for either. You must choose one — the same wallet cannot qualify for both.

• The ICO (public sale)
• The Airdrop

Then depending where you deploy $USDai or $sUSDai, you can earn more ALLO. The team released a cheat sheet here, that will be updated soon based on Base protocols deployment:

Screenshot of the Cheat Sheet

• ICO (Public Sale at 300m$ FDV) - 7% of total supply: mint USDai. Holding into your wallet makes you earn 4x to 5x multiplier ALLO points.

  • Deploy into Dex, Lending protocols or Pendle and increase the multiplier points up to 15x.

  • Note: KYC will be mandatory to participate to the ICO

• Airdrop - 3% of total supply : mint & stake to get sUSDai. Holding into your wallet makes you earn 2x multiplier ALLO points.

  • Deploy into Dex, Lending protocols or Pendle/Spectra and increase the multiplier points up to 12x.

  • No KYC required

=> End date of ALLO campaign: when USD.AI reaches $20M in total Yield Paid Out (YPO) (currently at 3.8m$ with a monthly YPO of 1.58m$ according to stablewatch) or 6 months being mid-February 2026.

Conclusion :

USD.AI is a compelling project with strong fundamentals, real revenue, and meaningful institutional backing. The AI sector isn’t slowing down, and whether it’s for Bitcoin mining or compute-as-a-service, demand for NVIDIA-class hardware is still exploding.

Having Coinbase involved adds legitimacy and distribution — that matters.

One open question is how USD.AI will manage long-term risk as GPU prices fall over time (Moore’s Law dynamics). But so far, the credit framework and collateral model look well-designed.

Bonus: How to protect your deposit (optional but smart)

If you’re risk-averse (like me 😄), you can hedge depeg or protocol risk using OpenCover by selecting a “Cover” :

1. Go to OpenCover (use my ref link if you want to support this newsletter and access “inner circle” pricing): opencover.com/subli

2. Select “Depeg Cover”, choose “USDai depeg” (it includes both $USDai & $sUSDai), input deposit size and pick duration (30, 60 or 90 days) → I’d pick 90days in order to cover the ALLO campaign.

   

   1. The deposit is covered on Arbitrum & Plasma for the time being, but integration to Base is coming by end of November 2025.

   2. Cost of cover is 1.1% while i remind you that native yield is around 12% if you use $sUSDai.

      

      Hope you enjoyed this article as much as I did to write it.

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After 4+ years in Defi, I’ve learned two things:

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2. Risk zero doesn’t exist

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Disclaimer: Nothing in this content is financial advice. I may have some positions on the presented projects, however these articles are written in a non biais way so that you can make you own opinion out of it.

Do your own research before investing, and remember that Crypto is extremely volatile and risky. Be ready to loose everything you invest in.