New cryptocurrency incubator Obex has raised $37 million to help build the next generation of revenue-generating stablecoins led by Framework Ventures, LayerZero, and the Sky ecosystem, the team told CoinDesk in an interview.
The initiative aims to provide investment and capital to projects that bring real-world asset-backed strategies on-chain and bring institutional-grade risk management and underwriting practices to a rapidly changing sector.
Obex becomes Sky’s latest capital allocator behind the DAI and USDS stablecoin, formerly known as MakerDAO, with a combined market capitalization of $9 billion, funding projects that scale and profit from the protocol’s vast reserves.
“We’re seeing stablecoins go to $1 trillion (dollar market), but I think high-yield stablecoins are going even faster,” Framework Ventures co-founder Vance Spencer said in an interview with CoinDesk.
Stablecoins are a group of cryptocurrencies that aim to maintain stable prices pegged to external assets, such as the US dollar, and are a rapidly growing asset class. Although they are primarily backed by fiat currencies and government bonds and are increasingly used for cross-border payments, emerging token groups seek to offer competitive yields to holders through back-end investment strategies. Often referred to as synthetic stablecoins, the most notable example is Etena’s $8 billion token USDE, which generates yield by holding spot cryptocurrencies while simultaneously shorting the same amount of derivatives in a neutral trading position.
However, some backing strategies may prove to be at risk of the token losing its original price anchor. A series of synthetic stablecoins, including Stream Finance’s USDX and Elixir’s deUSD, recently lost their pegs following a DeFi contagion caused by a decentralized protocol balancer exploit.
Obex was designed to avoid these stablecoin failures, Spencer said, highlighting the need for tighter oversight and better technology infrastructure. “You can’t have people create a $500 million stablecoin and let it blow up,” he said. “Sky has the infrastructure to extend these securely.”
The initiative will focus on stablecoins backed by high-quality real-world collateral and will focus on three key areas: Energy assets such as municipal-scale solar power generation and battery installations. And despite their size, financing facilities for large fintech companies are often not available.
The incubator will run a 12-week program for early-stage teams, providing access to capital, technology resources and Sky’s infrastructure.
Teams that pass the risk and governance review may be eligible for additional capital from Sky. Sky recently approved the deployment of up to $2.5 billion of USDS to the Obex project in a governance vote.
Spencer described Obex as “the Y Combinator of stablecoins,” referring to the influential Silicon Valley startup accelerator. “If you look around San Francisco, you see stablecoin ads everywhere. We receive five to 10 pitches every day,” he said. “The energy is there.”
“What’s missing is the infrastructure to properly take these ideas on board, make sure they’re safe, and actually scale them up,” he added.
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