Sky’s USDS goes multichain with Solana launch

Sky, formerly known as Maker, has launched its USDS stablecoin on Solana to introduce the network’s “first major Definative stablecoin.”

According to an announcement made on November 19, USDS is expected to enhance lending, borrowing, and trading on the network’s leading DeFi platforms; The launch marks the first step in Sky’s strategy to “increase Solana’s DeFi liquidity and TVL”.

With USDS, Sky hopes to capture a share of the growing decentralized finance market in Solana, which has seen an increase in daily trading volumes and locked in total value since the beginning of the year. According to DefiLlama, Solana’s TVL has grown from $1.4 billion on January 1 to over $8.3 billion at the time of writing; Daily trading volume recently reached an all-time high of $7.14 billion.

“Sky’s vision aligns with Solana’s powerful ecosystem of consumer applications, composability and high-performance technology,” the announcement added.

USDS integration into Solana is powered by Wormhole’s Native Token Transfer; This allows the stablecoin to become natively multi-chain, available on both Solana and Ethereum without the need for wrapped tokens, providing a unified supply across chains. NTT also allows Sky to connect its governance token, SKY, to the Solana network.

As part of the launch, Sky is encouraging early adoption by offering rewards to users and liquidity providers who interact with USDS across the four Solana DeFi protocols.

Kamino Finance users will receive 200,000 USDS per week to provide liquidity to USDC/USDS pairs, as well as an additional 100,000 USDS for stablecoin providers. Drift Protocol users who provide USDS will be eligible to receive a weekly reward of 100,000 USDS, while Save Finance participants will be able to earn a share of 400,000 USDS distributed monthly for their contribution to stablecoin liquidity.

Sky also plans to introduce SkyLink, a savings-focused version of the stablecoin that is an inter-chain bridge connecting USDS and sUSDS. This rollout, subject to governance approval, is expected to expand cross-chain interoperability for USDS holders.

USDS, a stablecoin pegged to the dollar, was launched in September and is a rebrand of the Dai stablecoin. It is currently the third-largest stablecoin by market cap, valued at $5.23 billion, competing with major players such as Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC.

Collectively, the two stablecoins account for more than 90% of the overall stablecoin market cap, which is $184.7 billion, per DefiLlama.

In related news, Sky recently attempted to revert to the Maker brand following confusion over the rebrand but the offer was rejected.