USDest — the dollar.
- Fully backed 1:1 by USDC and US Treasury bills
- Permissionless to hold, transfer and trade on Base
- No yield and no bond exposure, by design
- Transfers are never paused
Yield vault
Yield from real-estate credit.
sUSDest is the staked version of USDest and the yield-bearing token of the USD.estate protocol. It accrues yield from real-estate bonds and T-bills.
- Status:
- Launching on Base
- Reserve:
- USDC + T-bills
- Epoch:
- 30 days
- Governance token:
- None
Residential tower at dusk — illustrative.
What is sUSDest
Where yield comes from.
sUSDest earns from two sources: USDC coupons from real-estate bonds held by the vault, and Treasury bill yield on the USDest reserve, harvested into the vault.
Primary source
Real-estate bond coupons
The vault earns most of its yield from permissioned real-estate bonds: Luxembourg securitisation notes, Swiss-ISIN real-estate bonds and other bonds meeting the eligibility criteria, held as ERC-3643 permissioned security tokens and collateralised by real estate within maximum LTV limits.
Coupons are set by each issuer under its bond terms and paid in or converted to USDC; the protocol does not set rates. Bonds are held to maturity or to the issuer's scheduled redemption.
Secondary source
T-bill yield on the reserve
Capital not allocated to bonds stays as USDest in the vault, so it keeps earning T-bill yield through the reserve. That limits cash drag between deposits, bond subscription windows and maturities.
The reserve has two jobs: yield continuity, so depositors earn a baseline return regardless of when bonds are subscribed, and liquidity, so redemptions are paid from the reserve and bonds never need to be sold early.
Yield shows up in the exchange rate
USDest is staked to mint sUSDest. Yield from the underlying positions shows up in the exchange rate between the two, so sUSDest is not pegged 1:1 to any asset.
sUSDest rebases by price, not by supply. The number of sUSDest tokens you hold never changes. Each token becomes redeemable for more USDest as yield accrues. Holders do not need to claim anything.
- Staking
- sUSDest received = USDest deposited ÷ Deposit share price
- Redeeming
- USDest received = sUSDest redeemed × Redemption share price
- Share price
- Share price = Vault NAV ÷ Total sUSDest supply
Two share prices
sUSDest has two share prices, which stops depositors from sniping coupons. The deposit share price accrues every performing bond's coupon continuously from its last coupon date; the redemption share price counts only settled cash.
Two tokens
One protocol, two tokens.
Hold the dollar, or stake it for the yield. Nothing else to learn.
sUSDest — the yield.
- ERC-4626 vault of real-estate bonds and a T-bill reserve
- Yield accrues in the exchange rate — nothing to claim
- Redemptions in 30-day FIFO epochs
- Not a stablecoin
Bounded discretion
Risk architecture.
Discretion exists, but it is bounded in code and visible before it takes effect. Allocation between the reserve and bonds is the one area of bounded discretion: the strategy multisig decides it, and only within onchain guardrails. No party has discretion over coupon routing, NAV methodology or the order of redemptions.
Published eligibility & caps
Before any bond can receive capital from sUSDest, it must meet every eligibility criterion and pass the allowlist timelock: a debt security with an ISIN, a bankruptcy-remote issuer or segregated compartment, a senior claim on real-estate collateral, loan-to-value not above 70% at subscription, an independent valuation no older than 12 months and a remaining maturity not above 5 years.
Guardrails are the limits the strategy multisig cannot cross: a 20% reserve floor, a 20% per-issuer cap and a 10% per-bond cap, checked by the contracts on every allocation. Every change to a guardrail goes through the public 48-hour timelock, so depositors see it before it applies.
Two share prices
The deposit share price accrues every performing bond's coupon continuously from its last coupon date, so new depositors pay for coupon that has already been earned but not yet received. The redemption share price counts only settled cash — coupons and base yield that have actually reached the vault — so holders who leave do not take value the vault has not received yet.
Neither price involves any discretion. The difference between them is the accrued-but-unpaid coupon across all performing positions, plus base yield not yet harvested.
FIFO 30-day epochs, never sells early
Redemptions run on a global epoch cycle of 30 days, with a cutoff 48 hours before epoch close. At epoch close the queue is processed first-in, first-out from available USDest: a request that is only partly filled keeps its place for the remainder, and nothing but submission order gives priority.
The protocol never sells bonds early to meet redemptions. Bonds run to maturity, or to the issuer's scheduled redemption under their terms, so when most capital is in bonds, available cash may be limited and redemption queues may extend across several epochs.
Impairment rule
A credit event is a coupon or principal payment not received by its due date plus the bond's contractual grace period, or an event of default declared under the bond terms. Once a credit event has been outstanding for longer than 7 calendar days, the position is impaired: its carrying value is reduced to the lower of face value and 80% of the issuer-reported collateral value attributable to the position, which lowers both share prices.
Credit events, impairments and recoveries are recorded by the Holding Subsidiary's credit-agent role under the published rule. On final recovery, carrying value is replaced by the actual cash recovered. There is no insurance policy and no token backstop.
Concentrated by design
The sUSDest portfolio is deliberately concentrated / non-diversified: a curated book of senior real-estate bonds, not a broad index. The 20% per-issuer and 10% per-bond caps bound single-name risk, but the vault may hold a small number of positions.
The 20% per-issuer cap sits above diversified-fund convention on purpose. Depositors take concentrated credit exposure by design.
App guide
Stake and unstake.
Holding, transferring, staking and trading USDest and sUSDest are permissionless. Use of the App is subject to the Terms of Service, including the jurisdiction restrictions.
Stake
Staking your USDest
- Select the STAKE tab in the transaction modal
- Enter the amount of USDest to stake
- Review the terms, including the current deposit share price
- Click Approve to let the sUSDest vault spend your USDest
- Click Stake
USDest to sUSDest is not a 1:1 conversion. sUSDest accrues yield, so you receive fewer sUSDest than the USDest you stake, and more USDest per token when you redeem. The deposit price includes coupon already accrued.
Unstake
Unstaking your sUSDest
- Select the UNSTAKE subtab within the STAKE tab
- Enter the amount of sUSDest to redeem (minimum 1 sUSDest)
- Review the terms: next epoch close, estimated USDest at the current redemption share price, and the current queue ahead of you
- Click Request Redemption
- After your request is serviced at epoch close, go to Portfolio → Redemption Requests and click Claim
Need to exit now? Sell sUSDest in a DEX pool from the GET tab. The price may differ from the redemption share price.
sUSDest is not a stablecoin.
It cannot be redeemed instantly at par. It is a claim on underlying assets that include illiquid real-estate bonds, and redemptions are processed in fixed epochs. Its value can fall if an issuer defaults.
FAQ
More questions in the docs