Upcoming Layer 1 blockchain Nexus has unveiled its native rewards stablecoin, USDx.
USDx will serve as the Nexus ecosystem’s native dollar and will implement a Global Yield Distribution System (GYDS), under which applications that hold USDx earn a share of protocol revenue based on their users’ USDx holdings.
The design is intended to provide yield as a revenue stream for the ecosystem’s application layer, incentivizing each underlying protocol to integrate USDx.
Through USDx, Nexus aims to unify its ecosystem around a shared currency layer that aligns its applications and incentivizes them to drive conversions of USDT and USDC to USDx.
Nexus focuses on “verifiable finance,” where every layer and transaction in the ecosystem can be independently verified via cryptographic proofs without sacrificing privacy. The design is built on Nexus’ zero-knowledge virtual machine (zkVM), enabling verifiability without disclosing individual users’ sensitive information.
Nexus raised $27.2 million over two investment rounds between December 2022 and June 2024, with a seed round led by Dragonfly, and a Series A led by Pantera and Lightspeed.
CEO Daniel Marin told The Defiant that USDx is fully backed by U.S. Treasuries, but did not disclose an exact formula for how the yield will be distributed. “Applications and users that receive USDX-generated yield will do so according to their contributions to the protocol, such as TVL and volume, and as determined from time-to-time by the protocol’s monetary policy,” Marin said.
Marin did not directly explain why the yield is distributed to the application layer rather than to users who exchange their legacy stablecoins for USDx.
“USDx gives us the opportunity to create a new kind of economic design that allows Nexus to support decentralized governance, onchain activities, as well as yield streaming, all with the goal of building a system that aligns incentives for the protocol, developers, and users,” he said.