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
Stable dollar
The dollar, kept simple.
USDest is the synthetic dollar of the USD.estate ecosystem: a highly liquid, 1:1 USD-pegged asset and the base layer of the protocol.
- Supply:
- Not yet deployed
- Reserve ratio:
- —
- USDC buffer:
- 5%
- Chain:
- Base
Berlin, at night — illustrative.
What is USDest
USDest in the docsWhat backs it.
USDest is fully backed by USDC reserves. Part of the reserve is held in tokenized funds investing in short-dated US Treasury bills, and the rest is held as USDC to meet redemptions.
Minting is restricted by code
USDest can enter circulation only when the equivalent USDC is deposited into the protocol. There is no private-key minting, and total supply can be verified onchain at all times.
No bond exposure
USDest has no exposure to real-estate bonds or any issuer. It is isolated from property values, issuer credit risk and bond liquidity. Those risks sit only in sUSDest.
Where the reserve yield goes
The T-bill yield earned on USDest reserves is not paid to USDest holders. The reserve is custodied by the BasePositionManager, not by the USDest contract. When the reserve's value rises above USDest supply, the BasePositionManager harvests the surplus and instructs USDest to mint it as new USDest into the sUSDest vault, net of an admin fee.
At least daily dealing
Eligible reserve funds must offer at least daily dealing, so redemptions beyond the immediate USDC buffer settle on the fund's own dealing cycle — typically same-day or T+1 — rather than on a multi-day cycle. The USDC buffer keeps the reserve usable under redemption stress without touching the fund at all.
Reserve assets
USDC
Redemption buffer for approved institutions · at least 5% of the reserve · immediate
Tokenized T-bill fund
Short-dated US Treasury bills · at least daily dealing
custodied by
Custodian
BasePositionManager
Holds the reserve — not the USDest contract
backs 1:1
Stable dollar
USDest
Minted only against deposited USDC · supply verifiable onchain
T-bill surplusWhen the reserve’s value rises above USDest supply, the surplus is harvested and minted as new USDest into the sUSDest vault, net of an admin fee.
Yield vault
sUSDest
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
Principles
Design principles.
The wider protocol allocates to real-estate bonds, but USDest itself is a pure dollar instrument. It is built for composability across DeFi and gives a stable medium of exchange without the credit or duration risk of the yield-bearing vault.
Fully backed 1:1
USDest is fully backed by USDC reserves, and it can enter circulation only when the equivalent USDC is deposited into the protocol.
Provable reserve
The reserve is custodied by the BasePositionManager, and total supply can be verified onchain at all times.
No yield by design
USDest holders receive no yield. The T-bill yield on the reserve is harvested into sUSDest.
Transfers never paused
ERC-20 transfers of USDest and sUSDest are never paused — holders can always move and trade their tokens, even while the protocol is paused.
Base-native
The reserve, the sUSDest vault, the bond positions and the redemption queue all live on Base, and USDest and sUSDest are Base tokens. There is no cross-chain bridging.
Institutional mint/redeem with a 5% buffer and escrow above it
Approved institutions mint and redeem 1:1 against USDC. Redemptions up to the 5% USDC buffer settle in the same transaction; above it, the USDest is escrowed and settles after the tokenized T-bill fund settles its redemption, on the fund's own dealing cycle.
How to buy
Buy or redeem.
USDest is a permissionless asset. Any wallet can hold, transfer, stake and unstake it without restriction, and secondary markets on DEXs and CEXs are open to all.
Buy on Base
If you are not on the allowlist: buy USDest on a DEX or CEX, then stake it in the App to receive sUSDest and start earning.
In the App
- Select the GET tab in the transaction modal
- Select the input token (for example USDC) and the network
- Enter the amount
- Review the route and price. The App routes the swap through supported DEX pools
- Click Approve to let the router spend your tokens
- Click Swap
Seed liquidity for a USDC/USDest pool is intended at launch, so a secondary market is available from day one. Not yet deployed.
Mint and redeem 1:1
Direct minting and redemption at the smart contract level are limited to authorized market makers — KYC/KYB-verified partners who manage primary liquidity — and institutional depositors who have completed the USD.estate Foundation's compliance onboarding and signed the Institutional Mint & Redemption Agreement.
Settlement
- Mint
- Immediate, in the same transaction
- Redeem ≤ USDC buffer (5%)
- Immediate, in the same transaction
- Redeem > USDC buffer
- After the tokenized T-bill fund settles its redemption, on the fund's own dealing cycle
No institutional mint or redeem fee is charged at launch; either may be set above zero only through the timelock.
Approved institutions that arbitrage the secondary price against 1:1 mint and redemption keep USDest trading close to one dollar.
FAQ
More questions in the docs