Deploy Finance, a self-custodial alternative to synthetic dollars

Disclosure: Deploy Finance publishes this page and offers a competing product that appears in it.

Not financial advice. Crypto, DeFi and perpetual-futures strategies can lose money, including your whole deposit. Yields are variable, and past or backtested results do not predict future returns. Read the risk disclosure.

A synthetic dollar is a token that holds its value through a hedged trade instead of a bank account. Ethena's USDe, Resolv's USR, Solstice's USX, USDX, and Liminal's limUSD all run some version of the basis trade, long collateral and short a perpetual, and pass the yield to holders of a staked token.

Deploy Finance runs the same basis trade, but it does not issue a token. Its Income: Funding Rates agent holds the hedged position in your own wallet. So the choice is not about the trade. It is about whether you want a transferable claim on a protocol's reserve, or the position itself.

How synthetic dollar protocols compare

What synthetic dollars have in common

Every protocol on the list, apart from Usual, runs a hedged trade, and every one issues two layers. The base token (USDe, USR, USX, USDX) aims to hold $1 and usually earns nothing by itself. The staked or vault token (sUSDe, stUSR, eUSX, sUSDX) earns the yield. To collect it you hold the second token and trust the protocol to run the reserve behind it.

That arrangement gives you three things a wallet position does not:

• Transferability. You can move, sell, or post the token as collateral elsewhere in DeFi.
• Composability. Lending markets, Pendle, and liquidity pools accept many of these tokens.
• No operating overhead. The protocol runs the hedge, the custody, and the rebalancing.

It also gives the protocol discretion over what backs your token. Reserve mixes drift. Ethena's July 2026 disclosure put crypto basis at about 1% of reserves and DeFi lending at about 46%, a long way from the original pure basis-trade design. And exits run through the protocol's rules: cooldowns, unlocks, queues, or secondary-market liquidity.

The protocols, one by one

Ethena

Ethena issues USDe and the sUSDe staking vault, an ERC-4626 contract. It names three revenue sources: funding and basis on delta-hedged positions, staking rewards on approved collateral, and yield on stablecoin and RWA reserves. Unstaking sends USDe through a cooldown that governance moved from a fixed seven days to a dynamic one to seven days.

Resolv

Resolv splits the basis trade into tranches. USR is the stablecoin, stUSR earns the senior yield, and RLP is a junior token that absorbs losses first and earns more for it. Hedges run on centralized exchanges through off-exchange custody, plus onchain venues.

Solstice

Solstice issues USX on Solana and the eUSX YieldVault. eUSX blends four engines (funding arbitrage, hedged staking, tokenized T-bills, and institutional yield) under a portfolio manager. Exits take a seven-day unlock, with a 24-hour path for $1,000 or less.

USDX.money

USDX earns the funding and basis spread on delta-hedged derivatives positions, with backing held through an off-exchange settlement provider. As with USDe, the base token is inert and sUSDX is the yield-bearing layer. An insurance fund covers sustained negative funding, and only whitelisted entities that pass KYC or KYB can mint and redeem directly.

Liminal limUSD

Liminal's limUSD sits on top of its xTokens. It allocates across Hyperliquid funding strategies, staking, and money markets, and it moves across chains as a LayerZero token. Instant redemption costs 0.3%. A queued redemption on HyperEVM takes up to three days.

Falcon Finance

Falcon Finance issues USDf, an overcollateralized synthetic dollar minted against stablecoins, BTC, ETH, and other assets. Staking USDf gives you sUSDf, which earns from exchange arbitrage, delta-neutral basis spreads, and funding-rate arbitrage. Minting and redeeming USDf require KYC, though staking does not. Redemptions carry a 7-day cooldown, and fixed-term restaking pays more for locking sUSDf for months at a time.

Aster USDF

Aster's USDF is minted 1:1 with USDT. The USDT moves to a Ceffu custodial wallet and then to Binance, where it backs delta-neutral positions, and profits flow to asUSDF holders each week. Unstaking asUSDF takes about two hours. Redeeming USDF for USDT on Aster takes one to two days, up to seven for large amounts, and costs 0.1%.

Usual, for contrast

Usual often appears next to synthetic dollars, but its engine is different. USD0 is backed by tokenized Treasury bills rather than a hedged trade. Locking USD0 gives you bUSD0, a bond token that matures on June 11, 2028 and pays daily coupons in the USUAL token. Exiting early means recombining it with its redeem token, selling on the secondary market, or using the DAO's floor price, set at $0.92 at last review.

Where Deploy Finance differs

Deploy runs the basis trade without the token layer. Income: Funding Rates holds roughly 75% of capital as the spot asset and uses 25% to back a 3x perpetual short of matching notional on Hyperliquid. It collects funding hourly and rebalances automatically, closing positions rather than paying when funding turns negative.

The position sits in a self-custodial wallet Deploy creates when you sign in with email or Google. The agent's session key can trade but cannot transfer or withdraw. That changes three things compared with a synthetic dollar:

• No reserve to monitor. Your result comes from your own position, not from a mix the issuer can reallocate into lending or T-bills.
• No cooldown. You revoke the agent and withdraw; no unstaking contract or redemption queue sits in between.
• No tranche. Nobody's junior capital stands in front of yours, and you stand in front of nobody else's.

The trade-off is composability. A wallet position is not a token, so you cannot lend it, LP it, or split it on Pendle. If that matters more than direct ownership, a synthetic dollar is the better fit.

Deploy also offers Superstar, a directional agent that takes long or short positions from the same wallet. None of the synthetic dollar protocols offer directional exposure.

When one of them fits better

• Ethena if you want a yield-bearing dollar with wide DeFi integration and deep secondary-market liquidity.
• Resolv if you want to choose your place in the loss order, senior or junior.
• Solstice if you want a diversified yield token on Solana that mixes funding with T-bills.
• USDX.money if you want multi-asset delta-neutral exposure in token form.
• Liminal limUSD if you want Hyperliquid-native yield as a token you can bridge across chains.
• Falcon Finance if you want to mint a synthetic dollar against BTC, ETH, or other collateral and are willing to complete KYC.
• Aster USDF if you trade on Aster or BNB Chain and want a yield-bearing dollar with a short unstaking wait.
• Usual if you want T-bill backing and are comfortable locking USD0 until 2028 for token coupons.

Learn more

• Income: Funding Rates overview
• Best yield-bearing stablecoin alternatives
• Best delta-neutral yield strategies in DeFi
• Deploy Finance vs Ethena
• Deploy Finance vs Resolv
• Deploy Finance vs Solstice
• Deploy Finance vs Hyperliquid Funding-Rate Products

Start with Deploy Finance

Create a self-custodial Deploy Finance wallet and review the live agents.