Ondo USDY Brings $1.2B Tokenized Treasuries to Sei Network

Jessie A Ellis
Jan 28, 2026 15:03

Ondo Finance deploys USDY on Sei, marking the first permissionless tokenized Treasury product on the high-speed chain. DeFi integrations live at launch.

Ondo Finance has deployed its flagship yield-bearing stablecoin USDY on Sei Network, bringing over $1.2 billion in tokenized U.S. Treasury exposure to the parallelized EVM chain. The integration, announced January 28, makes USDY the first permissionless tokenized Treasury product available on Sei.

USDY currently trades at $1.11, reflecting accumulated yield from its underlying short-term Treasury and bank deposit backing. The token has dominated recent RWA flows, pulling in $567 million over the past 30 days according to industry data.

Why Sei Makes Sense for Treasury Tokens

The deployment targets a specific use case: institutions and non-U.S. users who want Treasury yield without the friction of traditional finance rails. Sei’s 400-millisecond finality and claimed 12,500 TPS capacity address a real pain point—settlement speed matters when you’re moving institutional capital.

Tokenized Treasuries have quietly grown into a $10 billion market as of late January 2026. The thesis is straightforward: corporate cash balances exceeding $8 trillion globally sit idle, earning nothing. Products like USDY convert that dead capital into yield-generating collateral that can simultaneously work in DeFi.

Sei has been stacking RWA partnerships aggressively. The network already hosts tokenized funds from BlackRock, Brevan Howard, Hamilton Lane, and Apollo—names that signal where institutional money is actually flowing.

DeFi Utility From Day One

Unlike some token launches that arrive with promises and little else, USDY hits Sei with immediate integrations:

Saphyre (formerly DragonSwap) offers swap functionality. Takara Lend and Yei Finance have listed USDY as borrowable collateral. LayerZero provides cross-chain bridging for users holding USDY on other networks.

For developers, the full ERC-20 composability means USDY slots into existing yield strategies and lending protocols without custom integration work. That’s the real unlock—Treasury-backed collateral that behaves like any other DeFi primitive.

The Fine Print

USDY isn’t available to U.S. persons, a compliance structure Ondo has maintained since the token’s August 2023 launch. New mints also carry a mandatory 40-50 day holding period before transfers unlock—a regulatory accommodation that limits some use cases but keeps the product legally viable.

The yield accrues through an accumulating token mechanism rather than rebasing, meaning the token price rises over time rather than distributing additional tokens. Ondo adjusts rates monthly based on underlying Treasury yields.

With institutional adoption of tokenized Treasuries accelerating—the sector hit $10 billion just days ago on January 24—Sei’s bet on becoming infrastructure for real-world assets gets another data point in its favor.

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