Five Major Crypto Projects Now Competing to Launch Hyperliquid’s USDH

Sky, the crypto protocol formerly known as Maker, has joined the competition to help decentralized perpetuals exchange Hyperliquid launch and manage its planned stablecoin, USDH. Sky is now the fifth major crypto project to submit a proposal after Hyperliquid announced its search for partners on Friday.

Sky co-founder Rune Christensen revealed his project’s proposal on Monday, offering Sky’s resources to back the USDH stablecoin. The proposal includes a customizable token that would provide yields competing with US Treasury bills.

“By using Sky to power USDH, the Hyperliquid community will gain unbeatable advantages that no other stablecoin project can offer,” Christensen stated in his pitch.

Sky is already an established player in the stablecoin market. The protocol created and backs USDS and Dai, which rank as the fourth and fifth-largest stablecoins with a combined market value of approximately $12.5 billion.

Christensen’s proposal promises Hyperliquid a 4.85% return on all USDH on its platform. He emphasized this rate is “above the T-Bill rate,” making it an attractive option for the exchange.

The proposal also mentions that USDH would be able to convert to and from a version of Sky’s USDS stablecoin. This would give holders a yield of 4.75% and would operate across multiple blockchains using the LayerZero protocol.

Key Features of Sky’s Proposal

Another selling point in Sky’s bid is the customization options for the stablecoin. Christensen highlighted that USDH could be designed to comply with US stablecoin regulations under the GENIUS Act, which prohibits stablecoin issuers from paying yield.

Sky’s proposal includes a $25 million commitment to create a project for “autonomously growing DeFi on Hyperliquid.” This initiative would have exclusive tokens that could potentially bring billions to the protocol, according to Christensen.

The competition for Hyperliquid’s stablecoin project is heating up with several major players now in the mix. Before Sky’s entry, four other crypto projects had already submitted proposals.

The first proposal came from Native Markets, a new venture established by Hyperliquid advocate Max Fiege. Their plan would use Stripe’s stablecoin payment processor Bridge to issue USDH.

Other contenders include stablecoin protocol Frax, stablecoin issuer Paxos, and crypto infrastructure firm Agora, which has backing from crypto fintech company MoonPay.

VanEck CEO Enters the Conversation

In an interesting development, Jan van Eck, CEO of investment giant VanEck and father of Agora co-founder Nick van Eck, made a public appeal to the Hyperliquid community on Monday. His message appeared to support his son’s stablecoin bid through Agora.

“We’d be thrilled to be a part of your community’s ecosystem,” van Eck wrote on X. “We have spoken to many of the leading HyperEVM builders and continue to look for new ways to contribute to Hyperliquid, whether that’s through this Agora proposal or something else in the future.”

Van Eck added a note of caution in his message: “But we don’t like being gang-tackled. You wouldn’t like us as a partner if we were pushed around easily.”

The decision on which proposal will be selected now rests with Hyperliquid validators. They will vote on their preferred option after the network’s next upgrade, though Hyperliquid has not yet announced when this upgrade will take place.