AI+DeFi is poised for takeoff, what about AI+stablecoins?

Original Author: 0x Jeff

Compiled by: CryptoLeo, Odaily Planet Daily

Editor’s Note: 2025 is the year of the rise of stablecoins. The United States has introduced the "GENIUS Act," and South Korea's new president, Lee Jae-myung, is fulfilling his campaign promise to allow local companies to issue stablecoins. On a national level, with Standard Chartered and Huakong leading the way, and companies like JD.com and Ant Group following, domestic and international corporate giants are exploring the issuance of various stablecoins.

Crypto AI researcher Jeff has analyzed the existing problems in current crypto + AI projects, which are too "AI-friendly and crypto-averse," making it difficult for them to establish themselves in DeFi. Additionally, Jeff has listed noteworthy AI + stablecoin projects, compiled as follows.

Stablecoins are one of the most important infrastructures created for cryptocurrencies. Without stablecoins, we would not have a stable currency unit for investors to invest in (which would make it very difficult to build CEX, DEX, Perps, money markets, and any other verticals).

Stablecoins are rapidly gaining popularity—between 2023 and 2025, the total supply, trading volume, and circulation speed (the frequency of stablecoin transactions) have surged, especially in payments and cross-border transactions.

In addition, we have seen clearer regulatory guidelines and further institutional adoption of stablecoins, such as Stripe launching stablecoin financial accounts in 101 countries, Société Générale planning to launch a dollar-backed stablecoin, and major banks (Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, Wells Fargo) exploring joint issuance of stablecoins. Large enterprises are also exploring stablecoin payment options to reduce transaction fees with Visa and Mastercard.

Recently, CRCL (Circle)'s IPO has also sparked a stablecoin frenzy, attracting more stakeholders. We see further adoption in TradFi while also witnessing some stablecoin innovations emerging in the AI field, aimed at addressing the challenges faced by service providers and users in Web3 AI.

The First Challenge

Although AI teams typically design AI tokens as key components of the AI ecosystem (payments, governance, utility), they often allocate fewer resources to DeFi and more to AI products.

Examples:

• Virtuals Protocol uses their VIRTUAL/AGENT LP, bringing good value appreciation to VIRTUAL, but at the same time making it difficult for the agent team and liquidity providers to provide liquidity (due to impermanent loss);

• Aethir uses the ATH token as payment for computing power, which pushes the token's value but also increases its volatility;

• Bittensor uses dTAO (alpha subnet token) to pay miners, validators, and subnet owners, requiring participants to sell alpha tokens for stablecoins to maintain their operations;

While these two examples can be seen as flywheels for AI tokens, their volatility due to design can also deter some key participants from engaging. (BTW, these three examples are relatively good, but many AI teams have done quite poorly in token design, especially some fair launch teams).

The increase in the number of tokens in the market, coupled with suboptimal designs, has led to lower liquidity, making it difficult to build DeFi Lego blocks.

Projects Addressing the "Uneven Resource Allocation" Issue

MAITRIX---AI Stablecoin Layer

Maitrix has launched an over-collateralized AI native stablecoin (AI USD) tailored for each independent ecosystem, essentially transforming unstable (but high-yielding) AI economies into predictable, composable, and vibrant economies with AI native stablecoins.

Key components of Maitrix:

CDP: Users deposit AI tokens and their derivative assets (liquid-staked or staked AI tokens) through CDP to mint and burn AI USD;

Stablecoin Launchpad: AI projects can create their own AI stablecoins using their native tokens and derivatives;

Curve War ve (3, 3) incentives: ve governance of MAITRIX tokens, emission redirection, and bribery mechanisms similar to ve (3, 3);

StableSwap DEX: Facilitates trading between various AI USD tokens.

Supported AI dollar assets (so far):

• Aethir USD (AUSD)------a stable computing power payment method;

• Vana USD (VanaUSD)------data-based stablecoin;

• Virtual USD (vUSD);

• ai16z USD (ai16z USD);

• 0G USD (0 USD);

• Nillion USD.

More partners are in discussions.

Currently, there is not much detailed documentation on each AI stablecoin use case, but I will provide a detailed technical overview once their white papers are released. For now, Maitrix is the only team building this layer for AI projects and has already established partnerships with top AI ecosystems.

Maitrix is currently gaining attention on the testnet. The public mainnet is about to launch.

The Second Challenge

With the continuous acceleration of AI development and the expansion of its application scope, the demand for computing resources is also increasing. Data centers and cloud operators need to plan their expansions in advance to meet future demands.

Enterprise-grade GPUs (such as NVIDIA's H100 and H200) are often expensive and require significant funding.

Traditional financing methods, such as bank loans or equity investments, are often slow and complex, preventing data centers from quickly scaling to meet demand. This is where the next two AI projects, Gaib and USDAI, focus.

Projects Addressing the "Demand Issue"

The first project is Gaib.

GAIB AiFi------the first economic layer for AI and computing power, Gaib tokenizes the future cash flows of GPUs to help data centers efficiently raise funds while providing investors with yield-bearing assets backed by real assets (GPUs).

Its basic operation is:

• Cloud/data centers package future GPU cash flows into financial products;

• These cash flows are tokenized on a 6-12 month cycle;

• Investors purchase these tokens and begin receiving periodic rewards;

• They refer to this AI synthetic dollar as "AID."

Each AID token is backed by a GPU financing trading portfolio and treasury bonds or other liquid asset reserves.

Floating yields are expected to have an APY of about 40%, largely depending on the GPU trading portfolio, whether through debt financing or equity trading (with equity accounting for over 60-80%, while debt yields 10-20% annually).

So far, they have accumulated about $22 million in TVL incentive deposits, which exist in the form of "Spice" points, granting investors rights to future airdrop rewards.

Additionally, Gaib has partnered with Aethir and conducted its first GPU tokenization pilot earlier this year. This pilot is merely the tokenization/subdivision of GPUs, as part of its roadmap, expanding into GPU-backed stablecoin "AID."

The second project is USD.AI.

USDAI is a yield-bearing synthetic stablecoin supported by RWA launched by Permian Labs. It is somewhat similar to Gaib but also different, USDAI is a stablecoin collateralized by hardware assets (such as GPUs, telecom equipment, solar panels), operating under debt financing transactions, where borrowers (asset owners) obtain loans from USDAI, pay interest, and these interest earnings belong to USDAI token holders.

Permian Labs is backed by metastreet, a top structured credit market providing NFT-backed loans, structured credit for illiquid assets/risk-weighted assets (watches, artworks), and products like Pendle's NFT yield rights transfer (PT YT).

USDAI has not yet launched, but its target yield is an APY of 15-25%, with asset portfolios divided into three stages, from 100% treasury bonds to 100% hardware assets. USDAI employs CALIBER, a system that simplifies the loan/issuance process and complies with legal standards for putting GPUs on-chain.

Odaily Note: CALIBER: Collateralized Asset Ledger: Insurance, Bailment, Evaluation, Redemption. This system is based on Section 7 of the UCC (Uniform Commercial Code) in the U.S., transforming real-world assets (such as infrastructure) into legally valid collateral for on-chain financing through asset tokenization and legal frameworks.

To clarify, USDAI focuses on debt and has a broader range of asset types. With its CALIBER model, they can cover various use cases (regardless of where the demand is), while Gaib focuses more on equity, offering higher expected yields.

You can fill out the form to apply to become an early user, and USDAI will provide additional rewards for early participants.

Other AI-Related Stablecoin Products

Almanak recently launched alUSD, an ERC-7540 version token (an extension of ERC-4626), which is a tokenized AI yield optimization strategy, aimed at maximizing risk-adjusted returns on stablecoin investments in Aave, Compound, Curve, Yearn, etc.

The Almanak team will soon launch a points program to guide liquidity and continue to expand the composability of DeFi, allowing people to use alUSD as collateral or recycle it to maximize yields.

AIxFI project, a vault that can automatically deploy USDC in DeFi protocols. Initially based on rules, it will gradually introduce AI for decision-making. It will launch this month on Virtuals Protocol.

Future Trends

We are likely to see the rise of another project, Ethena, focused on leveraging GPUs to bring high yields to stablecoins. More importantly, how they manage their 1:1 dollar peg and ensure the price returns to $1 in critical situations.

In the future, we will also see more tokenized AI strategies emerge. We have already witnessed AI optimizing yields better while considering gas fees, rebalancing costs, slippage, and other dynamic variables. Imagine tokenizing these strategies into highly composable "vaults," which can serve as collateral and be recycled for 5-10x leveraged yields.

As participants like Maitrix build stablecoin infrastructure for top AI ecosystems, we will begin to see an increase in Web3 AI liquidity. More AI value will start to become more composable and flow into DeFi, enhancing the value addition of the entire Web3 ecosystem.

While these teams are very interesting, risk/peg management/redemption/liquidation mechanisms are crucial when it comes to stablecoins. Conduct a thorough risk assessment before deciding to invest.