Accelerated bond march: Solana raises $635 million in tokenized treasuries

Circle has brought its USYC short-term bond fund to Solana, opening up a corridor so fast and cheap that institutional clients only need a couple clicks to exchange fund shares to and from USDC. The token has previously settled on Ethereum, Near, Base and Canton, with integration with BNB Chain on the way. On Solana, USYC can find fundamentally new scenarios: serve as margin collateral for derivatives or work as a profitable asset in DeFi protocols, where speed and low commissions are especially critical.

The tokenized bond market has tripled over the year - to nearly $8 billion - and USYC, with a $635 million capitalization, is fifth in the market. The interest is fueled by real debt securities: companies use them as collateral for lending, arbitrage strategies and hedging. Formally, USYC remains a permissioned solution: only institutions outside the U.S. that have passed KYC get access, and the protocols themselves must implement wallet verification. Therefore, the real race is centered around who will be the first to offer a convenient wrapper for such checks and grab a share of the commission.

The Solana ecosystem is getting a powerful liquidity tool just at a time when the network is preparing for a major Firedancer upgrade and discussing the removal of limits on compute units on the blockchain. Together with the growing infrastructure linking execution layers and asset storage, this sets the stage for more complex derivative products to move out of legacy networks. RWA.xyz analysts are already seeing capital inflows from market makers preparing to trade with USYC-based straddles.

Beneficiaries of the innovation are not limited to banking structures. Decentralized treasury management funds, insurance pools, and commodity lending protocols are getting a robust bond layer that previously required bridging and liquidity duplication. They can now issue synthetic positions and structured notes directly within Solana, reducing costs and operational risk. The development vector is shifting away from mere "steaking for the sake of pharming" towards the integration of traditional assets where yields are backed by government liabilities.

Observers note that permission barriers may even play into the hands of innovation: the need to filter participants stimulates the creation of authorization modules without privacy leaks, and thus the emergence of standardized solutions suitable for other asset classes.