Talk about stablecoins in depth, is Stablecoin still a blue ocean now?

Author: "WEB3 MINT TO BE", Mint Ventures

Host: Alex, Research Partner, Mint Ventures

Guest: Mindao, founder of dForce

Recording time: 2025.5.21

Statement: The content we discussed in this podcast does not represent the views of the institution where the guests are located, and the projects mentioned do not constitute any investment advice.

Hello everyone, welcome to WEB3 Mint To Be initiated by Mint Ventures. Here, we continue to ask questions and think deeply, clarify facts, explore reality, and find consensus in the WEB3 world. We will clarify the logic behind hot topics, provide insights into the incident itself, and introduce diverse thinking angles.

Alex: We have invited our old friend, Teacher Mindao, in this episode. Teacher Mindao has talked to us about many topics before, including US stocks and DeFi. The topic we are going to talk about this time is a recent policy hotspot, which is stablecoins, which may be one of the products with the widest adoption rate in the blockchain field. Let’s ask Teacher Mindao to say hello to us first.

Mindao: Hello everyone, I am Mindao. I am very happy to come here to share some stablecoins today.

What’s the difference between stablecoins in this cycle

Alex: OK, then let's get to the topic of today. We know that stablecoins are a track that has crossed many cycles and can hit new highs in each cycle. In your opinion, compared with the previous round of the current cycle, in addition to the issues we have developed later, what are the differences that are particularly worthy of attention in this cycle?

Mindao: We know that DeFi summer in 2021 and 2022 actually had a lot of types of stablecoins at that time, especially stablecoins on the chain, such as TERA, and many stablecoins that are completely based on the algorithms on the chain. However, after TERA collapsed in 2022, we saw that the entire stablecoin track had undergone a large differentiation and changes in the supply-side structure. Needless to say, the dominant ones are still mainly stablecoins with fiat currency. We see that the amount of minted coins of stablecoins has actually changed from 2022. I remember that the scale of minted coins of about 180 billion US dollars fell to the entire Luna collapse, falling to about 130 billion or 140 billion. Later, it slowly stabilized and began to rebound. Recently I looked at the data that should be $250 billion. So in fact, the entire DeFi TVL has not yet reached a new high, but we see that the amount of coin minting of stablecoins has exceeded the previous coin minting. The promotion of stablecoins here is not actually the native stablecoins on the chain we call, even algorithmic and over-collateralized. We see that the only highlight of this past cycle is Ethena's USDE. We just mentioned that USDT and USDC are fiat currency payment types. In fact, Ethena should be considered financial management, which is a profit-based and financial-based stablecoin based on native Crypto crypto assets. In fact, it cannot be called a stablecoin strictly, because for example, if I participate in Ethena's mining, most of the risks I bear are its price fluctuation risks, because it cannot achieve one-to-one exchange. Its entire exchange mechanism is not pegged to the US dollar stablecoin, but is still based on its exchange's pricing arbitrage positions. Of course, it has undergone transformation recently. I saw that I bought T-Bill assets for about one billion US dollars recently. But purely from the perspective of the previous cycle, we actually saw the differentiation of stablecoins, and the payment type was very obvious, and it was still dominated by fiat currency. Then, although DAI is considered to be the oldest decentralized stablecoin, its entire minting volume is basically maintained at the level of 50 or 6 billion US dollars, and there is no further breakthrough. I think there is a more certainty after DeFi summer that many stablecoins narratives are falsified at least at this stage, such as algorithms. With the clarity of regulation, I actually think many stablecoins of this type may be gradually eliminated. Then we can see that many of the new stablecoins in the market are driven by channels, such as PayPal. USDT and USDC are actually theoretically stablecoins driven by channels, and they are both based on the exchange. USDT used to be Bitfinex, USDC was backing by Circle. But even with the support of these two major exchanges, it is very difficult to develop. Binance also supports many stablecoins, and its resources are so good, but none of them have risen. So I think every cycle has timing for each cycle. From this timing, I may think it will be more of the launch of stablecoins led by channels in the future, especially some compliant channels.

The most influential regulatory policy

Alex: I understand. Just now you mentioned that a big change is the issue of timing. In the past year, the legislation of stablecoins, especially the United States, has made relatively fast progress in legislation on stablecoins. Just yesterday, the US Senate further promoted the bill called Genius in a procedural voting, and will follow up on discussions across the entire house and the formal voting of the Senate. In your opinion, what are the legislation or regulatory policies that have the greatest impact on the industry? How does it affect the current and future stablecoin industry?

Mindao: Actually, I think the entire regulation is two major markets, one is the EU and the other is the United States. In the EU's MiCA, it is the regulation of crypto asset market supervision, which is relatively strict in terms of regulatory framework. On the US side, there was actually a FIT21 that everyone discussed a lot last year, the so-called Financial Innovation Technology 21st Century Act. This has been passed in the House of Representatives and should be reviewed in the Senate this year. The Genius bill you mentioned just now was further promoted in the Senate yesterday. The difference between the Genius Act and the previous FIT21 is that Genius mainly talks about stablecoins, guiding and establishing the entire regulatory framework of US stablecoins, so its focus is more on the stablecoin side. Recently, everyone knows that the RWA track or this segment is particularly popular. As the vanguard of RWA, stablecoins are also the tokenization of US dollar deposit certificates and treasury bonds. So I think this is of great significance. The more critical point is that the first is to clarify and confirm the identity of the issuing entity, such as financial institutions and non-financial institutions, but if they apply for a license, of course, there is no complete definition of whether a technology company can be a stablecoin issuer. There are restrictions on some large technology companies, but there is no clear statement about whether Facebook or Google is counting, or whether it can be issued with its subsidiaries. But basically speaking from the spirit of the entire legislation, it is to encourage compliant financial institutions, and of course some non-financial institutions, but not the kind of large technology companies that can enter this field. I think another important point is the layering of supervision. The first is at the federal level, a scale of more than US$10 billion belongs to federal level supervision, and the rest of the ones below are all state level. So I think the implementation and clarification of the entire regulation will play a very important role in promoting the issuance of stablecoins later. Another thing is that we call the United States the so-called legislative beacon country, and many other countries and regions come from the relevant framework of the United States. For example, we have seen that Hong Kong has also recently pushed the so-called stablecoin sandbox, including the Hong Kong dollar stablecoin. I have also seen a lot of meetings in Hong Kong this time. In addition to the Hong Kong dollar stablecoin we mentioned, many teams are also working on offshore RMB stablecoins. So I think the US legislation is not only a legislation in the United States, but also a demonstration role for other places, including Hong Kong, Singapore and Dubai.

USDT Vs. USDC

Alex: I understand. So if we observe the market share of stablecoins, we will find that in the last cycle, TEDA, which is the issuer of USDT, has a very big challenge in its market share. Including the last round of DeFi Summer, the share of USDC issued by Circle actually grew rapidly. However, after entering this cycle, we found that the overall growth rate of USDT is much faster than that of other competitors, including its total scale, which is about 80 billion from the peak of the previous round. I checked it and it has almost doubled, to more than 150 billion or 160 billion. But USDC, we now look at its market value, has only increased by less than 20% from its peak in early 2022. You just talked about other stablecoins, and the growth rate has not been fast in the past cycle. What may be the reason for this pattern?

Mindao: Yes, this is a very interesting comparison. Because everyone has been comparing USDC and USDT, and they say that these two are the biggest beneficiaries after the stablecoin market emerges. But in fact, the financial report disclosed by Circle some time ago revealed many business models that everyone might not see, including that everyone actually overestimated the profit margin of USDC, and in fact, a large amount of costs are channel costs. In addition, I think many people regard USDT and USDC as an equivalent or equivalent stablecoin. Actually, these two are different things. USDT is closer to a shadow dollar, and USDC is what we traditionally call a stablecoin. I think the difference in the increase in their coin volume in the past few years is that if we regard stablecoins as a river, the amount of water storage in the lower reaches of the river depends on how many tributaries there are upstream. In fact, in terms of purpose and use case, financial management is one aspect, and the other is deposit and withdrawal. The deposit and withdrawal may be the biggest competitive advantage of USDC in stablecoins, which is that it can go from exchanges and coin vendors to US dollars one-to-one. But I think the market structure of USDT and USDC is completely different. For example, financial management may be some, and various exchanges accept financial management. Then the use scenarios of USDT on the transaction side are much more than USDC. For example, the perpetual contracts of each exchange use USDT as margin, most of them are; in addition, at the circulation level of the OTC side, the volume of USDT may be dozens or hundreds of times the secondary market circulation of USDC. So we see that if it is a river, there are too many tributaries of USDT, and the amount of water stored under it is much greater than that of USDC. So I think the difference in this point depends entirely on their own usage scenarios. USDT is closer to the shadow dollar, or the underground dollar, and is closer to our definition of money, not just a stablecoin, but to the definition of one-to-one peg with the dollar. Because you see that the actual price of USDT is not 1 to 1 with the US dollar most of the time, and the market is often fluctuating. For example, in some offshore markets, there may be premiums and discounts. Of course, one of the benefits of Shadow Dollar is that it has very, very many counterparties, and its range of acceptance as a general equivalent is much larger than USDC and its moat is much larger. Another very critical point is that from the financial reports disclosed by Circle, it can be seen that it actually has very high channel fees for Binance and Coinbase, but USDT has no such thing as I want to pay you a channel fee, and many exchanges take the initiative to list coins. So from the perspective of usage scenarios and utility, I think USDT is much larger than USDC.

Alex: OK. So, USDT occupies such a large dominant position now. I believe that for USDC, including many institutions that will enter the market to issue their own stablecoins in the future, they also hope to develop towards USDT's current position. In your opinion, is it still possible for them to reach the scale of USDT? For example, let’s take USDC as an example. As its biggest competitor, do you think it has this possibility at present?

Mindao: I think USDC may be more difficult in this regard, mainly because the opponents who came later basically eat the USDC market. For example, if the fiat currency deposit and withdrawal channel, if banks and financial institutions want to issue stablecoins, this is their natural advantage. In this regard, I think USDC cannot compete with it at all. Just like PayPal, its other channels of deposit and withdrawal, trade or payment are actually far stronger than USDC. So if stablecoins really pass the House of Representatives this year and become law, I actually think that the entire compliant stablecoin entrance will be opened, then the new players entering are actually particularly strong in traditional channels. USDC relies on Coinbase and Binance, which has the first-mover advantage, but this moat is relatively low. For example, Facebook, of course, now says that large technology companies may not allow direct posting, but what if it is through cooperation or another method? I think they have expressed this meaning recently, and they may need to restart the Libra project. Including Twitter's X also has great ambitions in the payment field and stablecoin field. So if they come in, I think the channels will completely crush the channels that USDC is currently cooperating with.

Possibility of traditional financial institutions entering the stablecoin

field

Alex: Do you think these traditional financial institutions, including those with their own channel advantages on the Internet, have ambitions for scenarios outside of TEDA's chain and their existing traditional deposit and withdrawal business? What are their possible ways or methods to enter this field?

Mindao: Yes, JD.com is also preparing to issue Hong Kong dollar stablecoins in Hong Kong. Alibaba is actually making plans in this regard, all of which are based on their e-commerce business as their tentacles. But I think TEDA's overall positioning is more clever now. The first is its current network effect. I refer to the real network effect, not many of which are subsidized by USDC and are maintained by high channel costs. I think TEDA is the most typical of a truly natural network effect. This network effect will continue to strengthen and will not be easily replaced by a single channel. For example, if JP Morgan issues a stablecoin, it may be more convenient to deposit and withdraw money between banks. However, secondary transactions or OTC circulation may not be able to compare with TEDA's current network effect. So from this point of view, I think TEDA has a unique competitive advantage in the current compliance situation. Because the market it seizes is something that other compliant stablecoins cannot enter, or other channels cannot fully cover it. Moreover, it is not only used on the trade side, payment side and OTC side, but basically all the scenarios that compliant stablecoins can cover can also be covered. Except for the one-to-one bank exchange channel, it is now impossible to open directly in the European and American markets. In addition to this, other secondary circulation and payment ends have already been covered. So on the contrary, I think it may be more difficult to compete with TEDA for the subsequent compliant stablecoins. In fact, TEDA has many challenges. When it came out in 2015, people didn’t take it seriously. Later, you saw Huobi’s stablecoin HUSD, and OKX had stablecoins. Binance had a third stablecoin, but none of them were stronger than it, and even did not reach the scale of USDC. It can be seen that the network effect here and the channel cost required to push it later are very high.

Alex: I understand. I saw that when the two parties were discussing this Genius bill, Elizabeth Warren, a major Democratic opponent, mentioned a risk point. She believes that once the bill is passed, the market size of stablecoins may grow from the current 200 billion to the trillions in a few years. Although she is not satisfied with the current bill and believes that the control is not enough, she has such a prediction. Do you think this prediction is reliable? Can the scale really expand ten times to trillions within a few years? In addition, is this 1 trillion new market share likely to be attributed to TEDA who is currently in the leading position? Or may the newly added market share be more occupied by some new players, including the stablecoins issued by JP Morgan, or stablecoins issued by large Internet companies you just mentioned?

Mindao: Yes, Elizabeth Warren has been anti-Crypto all the time. I think she has deviated from and injustice when she sees this matter. Let’s talk about domestic political issues in the United States. For example, when the stablecoin bill was opened, the US lawmaker had already held another meeting to disclose the so-called Trump family’s crypto industry. I think this is a very political issue. For example, in the stablecoin bill, there is actually a lot of opposition. Trump's family also issued a stablecoin called USD1, so I think there are many political issues here. But let’s put aside politics, the entire stablecoin is now about 180 billion US dollars to buy US bonds, and it has become the top ten holders of US bonds. Then we can see that if this market continues to grow, the US bond volume will definitely increase in the same proportion, and there is no doubt. Of course, I think ten trillion may be a big goal. The general estimate is whether it may exceed the scale of one trillion US dollars by the end of next year. I think you may still feel vague about the growth of the entire stablecoin. For example, when we were working on DeFi in early 2019, the TVL of the entire DeFi was less than 100 million US dollars, or about 60 to 70 million US dollars. By the time of DeFi summer peak in 2020, it was about US$250 billion, an increase of two or three thousand times. The amount of coins minted by stablecoins is almost the same, from more than ten or twenty billion US dollars to more than 200 billion US dollars today, an increase of hundreds of times. Of course, I think it is definitely difficult to rely so many times on these two companies now. But we see that the number of T-bills on the chain in BlackRock has increased to $200 to $3 billion in recent months. So I think if compliance agencies come in, it does not mean that they will grow slowly. They may reach the double position within half a year or a year. So I think TEDA will definitely have a large share of growth in this compliance framework, but the greater growth may come from the issuance of stablecoins of other new compliant institutions or technology companies. This ratio will slowly rise. There is a very large payment Web2 company called Stripe. His founder shared it during his speech. In the past 6 months, he has collected a payment platform for stablecoins or a technology integrator called Bridge. After receiving it, the data has increased by dozens or hundreds of times compared to the data of traditional Web2. So I think in the future, stablecoins will greatly replace the existing interbank settlement and payment infrastructure we mentioned, and may be fully laid out within two or three years. Then how much stablecoin issuance is needed here to carry the replacement of new infrastructure, this amount is definitely very large. I don’t think we should understand this from the purely past DeFi cycle or cryptocurrency cycle, because the development of stablecoins has nothing to do with the crypto cycle. This is why stablecoins still broke through new highs after the collapse of DeFi summer. In fact, the entire crypto assets themselves have not changed much. Because a large amount of funds come in, it may not necessarily say it wants to look for arbitrage opportunities in crypto. There may be many opportunities for buying US bonds on the chain. So I think its growth curve is difficult to compare according to the growth of DeFi or crypto assets. I think this growth, if it is open, may be a jumping style.

Possible measures of countries on stablecoins

Alex: I understand. So let’s look at it a little bigger. The growth scale of the US dollar stablecoin is so rapid, and so many institutions are coming in later. In fact, it is very helpful for the circulation of the US dollar in the global field and to cover more scenarios. On the other hand, many international markets are now questioning the basic value of US dollar and US bonds. It must have been Moody's two days ago, and it also lowered the ratings of US dollar or US bonds. There seems to be a very strong comparison between the two sides. The United States has begun to promote the deployment of US dollar stablecoins in global channels. Compared with the US dollar, have other countries feel a crisis in the stablecoins? Or what kind of measures do they have? Please share your views on this based on your observations.

Mindao: I think this sense of crisis is very strong. Including the United States, we now talk about MAGA, MAGA's AI and encryption policies. In fact, I think its only imaginary enemy is China. All the promotion of the US dollar stablecoins or the US dollar crypto market are benchmarked against China. For example, if the United States does not promote the US dollar stablecoin, China's Belt and Road Initiative will do this currency swap, including China, in fact, it is also very active in promoting the development of RMB digital currency. I think the United States has a very clear understanding of the crypto market, but also the continuation of the hegemony of the entire US dollar. Including the current US Treasury Secretary himself has worked in the Soros Fund for many years, so he is the one who knows the money market best among so many Treasury Secretarys in the past. When he was at Soros Fund, he also sniped the pound, so he had a very deep understanding of the money market. At the same time, the Minister of Commerce is one of the shareholders of TEDA. I think they understand the relationship between business logic and the hegemony of the US dollar and stablecoins. It is not a shallow saying "I know this matter", but a very understanding of this mechanism. I think there is a more appropriate metaphor here, that is, the US dollar stablecoin is a so-called superconductor of the US dollar at room temperature. In the traditional world, the US dollar has many electronic settlements, SWIFT, and various transfers, but the friction is very large, with supervision from various places and infrastructure from different systems. When you use a stablecoin to achieve it with an account, you will find that this thing is very efficient. So I think this metaphor is very appropriate. It is a superconductor at room temperature, with very small friction, and it does not mean that the threshold is particularly high. As a payment institution, you no longer have to touch the infrastructure of traditional banks. So in this regard, I think it will greatly superconducting the hegemonic speed of the US dollar. For example, the interest rate fluctuated very heavily in DeFi in the past. As you see the recent interest rates on the chain, you can't say that they are completely anchored to US dollar treasury bonds, but US dollar treasury bonds have been very, very strong in the transmission of the entire DeFi liquidity and the interest rate market of the stablecoin. This will only become stronger and stronger, as more and more underlying protocols integrate this T-Bill's assets. This becomes the US dollar interest rate policy. In the past, it was actually difficult to achieve global synchronization of the US dollar's interest rate policy. Each bank may have a different interest rate, but on the chain and in the stablecoin market, I think the transmission of interest rates will become very efficient. Actually, I am not particularly optimistic about the so-called stablecoins in small countries. Because it does not mean that a fiat currency will become stronger, more efficient, and better flow. The bottom layer still depends on the country's economic strength. So in the end, there may be only the United States, China, the European Union, and Japan. These fiat currencies in these countries that already have a relatively market position in the foreign exchange market and are supported by the underlying economic volume may enter a very important battle market in the stablecoins. Because if you don’t enter, you will actually be gradually converted into US dollars. Dollarization used to occur in small countries with relatively political turbulence or the overall economic turbulence. If the stablecoin of the US dollar continues to maintain this high monopoly, I think it may lead to the gradual US dollarization of the EU and even regions like China. Because the big difference between this thing and the traditional dollarization is that when the assets on this chain switch with their own currencies, their frictional costs are far lower than those of the traditional foreign exchange market. This will lead to saying that if you want to keep the US dollar monopolizing, I think like the EU, they will also think that this is a great challenge to their currency sovereignty. So I think this will intensify the competition in the stablecoin track among major countries.

Alex: I understand. In the current situation, I believe that all countries should see the tendency of the US dollar. So it is also a high probability event that they will accelerate their own currency stablecoins later, right? Is it understandable this way?

Mindao: Yes, in fact, everyone understands how the stablecoin business is done. In fact, in essence, the lowest logic of stablecoins is to help sell treasury bonds. Think about it, what we stablecoin holders do in the end is to become the ultimate purchasing power of US debt. Whether it is TEDA, USDC, or buying on our chain, it will eventually be converted into the purchasing power of US bonds. In this way, you are reducing the financing costs of US dollars. So in the end, whether consumers, financial institutions, or governments in the United States, may be the biggest beneficiaries. For example, the promotion of RMB stablecoin will definitely ultimately reduce the financing cost of RMB. I think everyone understands this. This does not simply mean maintaining a monopoly position at the liquidation and settlement level of a certain currency. In fact, it is still a completely integrated two sides in terms of pricing power, capital circulation, and capital costs.

Centralized stablecoins Vs. Decentralized stablecoins

Alex: We looked at a lot of algorithmic stablecoins you just mentioned in the last round, including many decentralized stablecoins. However, some stablecoin projects that have emerged in this round, such as Ethena, and PayPal's PYUSD, are actually more typical stablecoins associated with centralized institutions. So at present, does this mean that institutionalized and centralized stablecoins are actually more suitable for stablecoins products? Or, based on the current situation, can we basically determine that the exploration of decentralized stablecoins is difficult to succeed?

Mindao: In DeFi, stablecoins actually started to exist in Bitshare in about 2014 or 2015. At that time, the RMB stablecoin and the US dollar stablecoin had been proposed. By 2015, MakerDAO was the first large-scale decentralized stablecoin. I have been working on the stablecoin track since 2019, mainly decentralized stablecoins. Actually, when I look at the extension of the entire track, I think the positioning and narrative of decentralized stablecoins have changed a lot so far. Many of them are falsified. For example, the previous decentralized stablecoins still used transaction media and payment as a very important application scenario. Without this, the logic of decentralized stablecoins itself will be difficult to hold. But we see that in this cycle, the several stablecoins that came out are basically focused on financial management returns. For example, Ethena, when the amount of coins rises the fastest, the returns of the arbitrage basis are used as a major point. For example, at that time, basically we looked at the income from mining that was about 10%. Even if we added points and some incentives from Pendle's PT, it might reach 20 to 30%. At that time, the income from sUSDE was very high. But we see that at the end of the last cycle, its underlying returns were actually lower than those of T-bill. So, I think there may be one or two competitors in the decentralized stablecoin track in the end. Of course, I think its appeal is very different from that in fiat currency stablecoins. For example, there are still many people who hold DAI, because its biggest point is that there is no blacklist function on the chain. However, DAI solved several problems in a particularly clever way: one is that most of its underlying income comes from government bonds; the other is that there is a reserve on the chain between it and USDC, which can be exchanged one to one. Of course, this reserve has a quantity. When this quantity is small, it will be sold from treasury bonds and then converted into on-chain reserves. So there was a saying at that time that all decentralized stablecoins were actually well designed, and in the end they were USDC wrappers, which were a packaged version, which was about the DAI model. Although it is a token encapsulated by USDC to some extent, because it does not have a blacklist function and has the characteristics of anti-censorship. There are also some places where collateral can be added, which are not much the same as traditional fiat currencies in terms of economic models or monetary policies, which makes it have a certain possibility and necessity in the crypto world. You can see that in the past few years, the total amount of coins has been at that position, and there has not been much change. In the future, the decentralized stablecoin track may be divided into two categories: payment type. I think it is basically difficult to achieve, and it is difficult to achieve the amount like USDC. Now it seems that this model cannot be achieved. The other two categories will find some specific scenarios. For example, the financial management type I just mentioned can gather various sources of income. For example, Ethena is no longer a single arbitrage strategy. There are T-bill returns at the bottom, so it is a thing of mixed returns. The same is true for DAI, and there are many Ethena strategies below. So from the perspective of DAI, it is also a hybrid strategy. But it's hard to imagine a centralized stablecoin doing so. For example, the recent GENIUS Act in the United States has clearly prohibited interest-type stablecoins. So in fact, there are opportunities for decentralized stablecoins such as financial management, especially when they can be combined and assembled very well on the strategic side. This is much more flexible than traditional fiat stablecoins. I think it is a good point to start from the financial management side. Another point is to be an accounting system within the DeFi protocol. For example, we actually have sUSX, which is an internal lending agreement, which is used as accounting voucher between different lending agreements from us. For example, Aave has a GHO, which is not a stablecoin strictly, but it serves as a system for accounting between protocol liquidity. The advantage is that I can use this stablecoin to dispatch the liquidity of my different chains, a bit like a dollar-based equivalent of interbank internal accounting. I think this is necessary in the configuration of the protocol. Of course, including Curve's crvUSD, it also hopes to make it a unified liquidity allocation in the entire Curve's DEX pool, so that capital efficiency can be improved. So I think that in decentralized stablecoins, the "I compete with fiat currency" may gradually turn into a specific scenario. We just talked about financial management and also include equivalents between agreements. In this way, the overall positioning and market will be difficult to compare with fiat currency in the future.

The impact of the stablecoin bill on top Defi businesses

Alex: I think there is also a saying now that after the market size of stablecoins gradually grows, although as you said, many stablecoins have not flowed into the crypto scenario, there will always be some TVLs flowing into our industry, including TVLs like Pendle, including Aave lending protocols. Therefore, some voices believe that once the stablecoin bill is passed, it will be beneficial to some leading Defi's businesses. What do you think of this point of view? If you agree, which projects do you think are likely to be more improved in project fundamentals?

Mindao: I think it is divided into two aspects. I see that the market also reported yesterday, and Aave also rose by 20% or 30%. But I think Aave rose not because it has stablecoins. I think it is because as a Defi bank, the more stablecoins, the better liquidity, and there are more stablecoins of this fiat currency that can come in. In this regard, I think agreements like Aave, or those who do lending markets like us, are definitely a good thing, because it means more liquidity is coming in. And when stablecoins come in, they will eventually have to crypto and leverage the assets of RWA. So I think the more benefit here is the so-called more favorable protocols that are not directly related to decentralized stablecoins. For example, lending agreements, DEX, UNISWAP, stablecoins also need pools, or there must be a swap pool between you and the euro, including assets such as RWA. But for this native stablecoin protocol, a stablecoin protocol like Ethena may be a big impact. Because if the first Ethena was solely based on basis arbitrage, the basis arbitrage business has now been eaten up by traditional Wall Street financial institutions. They are not like we used to do arbitrage, and we had to go to centralized exchanges and offshore exchanges. Now, most of the Wall Street hedge funds directly trade in ETFs and CMEs, which can wash away the returns. There may be tens of billions of dollars in this. So I think in the basis area, it will definitely be more and more squeezed in the long run, and in the end it will be the same as the yield of the treasury bonds or may be a little lower. Even in a big bull market, the efficiency of traditional funds entering this market is getting higher and higher, and it will crush this basis very much. So if you rely solely on arbitrage strategies to scale, I think it is difficult to scale. Basically, it is unimaginable to reach the scale of USDC and USDT. So I think it will be a big challenge to make stablecoins like this like that.这也是为什么说Ethena 后来把一部分资产，大概十几亿美金已经转成了T-bill。会不会更多转到那边来，可能就看它的基差套利的回报有多高。像DAI 那种，它作为一个不是纯粹理财型的，很多持有人持有DAI 是不升息的，存在链上的。像这种稳定币我觉得，可能这个消息应该只能算是一个中性偏空，不能说完全是利好。但是我觉得对于Bridge、借贷协议、DEX，是一个特别大的利好。而且伴随着稳定币进来，我们刚刚讲了，稳定币只是一个排头兵，后面还有RWA 资产。我最近在香港转了一圈，所有以前我传统金融机构的朋友都对RWA 特别上头，我也不知道为什么，就有点像当时NFT 市场出圈一样。每个传统机构的人都在讨论说要怎么折腾RWA。这一点我觉得肯定是跟美国整个监管的清晰化，还有稳定币的这些发展有非常大的关系。

Alex： 现在稳定币是一个网络效应或者说马太效应非常强大的一个商业类别，像泰达已经占据非常大的市场份额。现在市场的监管政策已经快要清晰化了，有很多机构想要下场去做。您觉得以目前这么一个市场节点来看，不管对于中心化还是去中心化稳定币，稳定币的现状是不是可以被归类为是蓝海？ ,

民道： 对，我觉得稳定币现在还是蓝海，但是虽然这个牌桌还是蓝海，牌手换了。我觉得对于原生的加密团队来说已经不是蓝海了，但是对于传统金融机构、传统Web2 的这些大企业还是一个蓝海。现在说白了还没有哪一个进来，像Paypal 算是做了一个尝试，但也不能说非常成功。但是对于原生的这些创业团队来讲，我觉得可能都不一定能上牌桌。这个是我觉得比较大的问题，后面可能会聚焦到我刚刚讲的，从其他的细分赛道去做，就不是纯粹跟法币去竞争支付，竞争交易媒介。

Defi、AI 以及稳定币的化学反应

Alex： 好，那我们再去看一个跨域的问题。像刚刚您也说，美国那边比较希望去创新推动的两个产业，一个是crypto，另外一个是AI。像AI 的话，我们这一轮也有很多所谓的AI 项目出现，但是真正有产品需求跟市场契合点的项目跟赛道其实并不多。很多人提到一个观点，或者说他们定义了一个新的赛道名称叫Payfi，他们认为是大有可为的。您怎么看payfi 这个定义跟稳定币的关系？以及AI 跟稳定币之间会不会产生一些化学反应？

民道： 我觉得Payfi 就是公链和项目方们造出来去讲故事的一个概念，有点像SocialFi 或者GameFi。到底这个东西从逻辑上能不能成立或能不能落地，我觉得还是存在疑问。现在典型的市场上的payfi 项目其实主打的是两个叙事：一个就是理财和支付怎么结合？怎么能在做支付的情况下又能够有更好的收益？但是其实这个角度不就是稳定币的生意吗？如果稳定币渗透到各个渠道去，比如USDT 或USDC 在各个payment 的系统里面，也可以存到各个Defi 协议去升息。对于Payfi 的企业来讲，它能够抓到多少这种机会呢？可能这里面有一些特别细分的资产类别，比如说做应收账的，可能是在解决资金的turnover 上有一些特定的场景，我觉得可能能推。但是这个概念本身，我觉得很难成一个独立的大类别。当然AI 和Crypto 结合我觉得是另外一个事情，它可能跟payfi 有一点重合，但不完全是。因为我们知道现在AI 的agent 在Defi 里面应用很大的一个便利的地方在于AI 的agent 还是需要有支付系统的介入的。传统支付这块确实从整合上讲，没有像稳定币，或者原生的Defi 协议介入得那么无缝。所以我觉得在这一点上，我是比较看好将来在AI 自动化资金的汇集和投资决策这块会有非常大的发展。我们自己本身也在做AI 和DeFi 结合的东西，我觉得传统DeFi 的发展有一个很大的障碍在于，所有以前的DeFi 是百分百的逻辑都要写到这个合约里的，扩展性特别难。这也是为什么从19 年到现在，整个DeFi 的基础协议是没有太多变化的，还是那几个AMM、DEX 的，借贷协议，另外就是稳定币。虽然最近出了合约类的，但还没有哪个玩家是真的把这个市场的份额做到像Uniswap 在AMM 或在DEX 那么大的位置。DeFi 的演变在过去几个周期其实都很慢，其中一个最大的原因就是它合约只有百分之百写在链上，审计费用等各方面的成本加起来非常高。后面AI agent 和DeFi 结合，我觉得很大的一个变化就是会把整个开发模式做变化，可能将来的链上逻辑只占10% 到20% 的部分，另外80% 的逻辑由AI agent 来去实现。市场上也看到有一些比较早期的用例开始慢慢浮现。而且随着AI 的推理能力越来越强，其实很多跟我们当时在传统交易的时候引入的东西跟现在这个LLM 的灵活性和扩展性的差别非常大。所以最近我们在看，我觉得在DeFi 的结合上，和稳定币肯定是最核心的一个使用场景，比如说AI agent 去支付各种各样的服务，是用传统的支付媒介还是用稳定币来支付，肯定稳定币是一个更加自洽的方式。还有一个比较有意思的点就是现在大家都讲的这个AI agent 最后是形成一个点对点的闭环。你的收入和成本都是在链上，在agent 这个层面能够完全闭环完成，不需要任何人的干预。在这种前提下，随着agent 越来越自动化，你必须要整合一个能在链上完成你的收入的归集和支付的框架，那这个对于稳定币和DeFi 来讲，跟agent 结合是一个最天然的事情。

Alex： 明白。刚刚您提到了DeFi 跟AI 的结合，这其实也是我最近比较感兴趣的一个话题。您提到之前智能合约为基础的DeFi 发展速度比较慢，是因为它大部分的逻辑需要到智能合约、到链上去执行。您这边还提到了一个点，说可能后续80% 的逻辑是由AI 去实现，20% 是在链上智能合约里面。这个80% 对应的是一个什么内容呢？

民道： 我给你举个例子，比如说我们现在正在做一个跨链的收益聚合的产品。传统来讲，这个在DeFi 里面是做不到的。因为第一个，不同链，涉及到信息同步，肯定没法做原子交易。你可以通过一些跨链协议，比如LayerZero 去做一些对接，但是不同链的资金来源和不同链、不同协议里面的配置，这里面需要的逻辑已经复杂到没有哪一个合约写下来部署到不同链上就能解决，传统DeFi 是做不到的。但是通过AI Agent 就变成了传统DeFi 这块只做用户端的存钱和取钱，另外就是链上的策略，还有就是从跨链到去存不同的协议，它只做这一块。实际上就是回到我们说的，Crypto 的结算是在链上逻辑要去实现的，保证在账本上至少是可验证，是透明的。但是中间的所有逻辑，比如说我从以太坊的Aave 取出来，要跨到Base 上存到Morpho 去，然后我在Morpho 里做leverage、再looping，这里面逻辑的变化是非常多的。我觉得传统DeFi 一个很大的问题在于商业逻辑。像币安或者说Cefi 的产品的迭代是以天、以周为计的。有新的东西出来，马上就可以推出来了，这是币安这样的中心化交易所的中心化服务逻辑。但是DeFi 的所有逻辑必须要完全写在链上。我们看Uniswap、Aave、MakerDAO，这几个就是我们说的基础的DeFi 协议，迭代周期是以两到三年的周期计的。要这么长时间的原因就在于，所有DeFi 都是静态的逻辑，但是商业变化是动态的。今天要揭露这个策略，明天要揭露另外一个策略，这是动态的。所以我觉得AI Agent 特别适合做很多动态逻辑的扩展。我们以前做AI 的开发几乎要穷举每一个规则。但现在基本上推理模型很多是不需要穷举规则和情况的。比如说我们讲到跨链的成本问题，它就能理解Gas 费用怎么摊到多少天，对APY 有多少影响，不需要我们再去重新制定一个非常细的规则。所以我觉得将来，除了我刚讲的链上的这些涉及到资金的进出结算之外的，大部分逻辑是能够通过Agent 实现的。这个跟传统的Cefi，跟币安最大的区别就在于，这里面需不需要人去干预。比如币安如果没有团队去优化和干预的话，业务肯定跑不动的。所以我觉得DeFi 里面可能会有些逻辑相对比较简单的业务完全可以由Agent 在不需要团队干预的情况下去做优化和实现。再下一步可能就扩展到不同的，从收益聚合到借贷，到SWAP，我觉得后面会慢慢都由Agent 实现。其实这个周期我们也看到像Ethena 这种，很难说它是一个DeFi 项目，所有的资金都在交易所里面，都是在团队的控制下去跑套利的策略的。但是后面我觉得可能所有的底层的DeFi 协议，会用AI 做改造，全部用Agent 去慢慢取代。这个趋势我觉得非常明显。下一个周期如果出现所谓的这种DeFi 产品，它就不是我们传统意义上的完全基于链上合约逻辑的DeFi 产品了。

Alex： 明白。那像这种下一代DeFi 叠加AI 模块的产品，AI 假如占到80% 的执行逻辑的话，这个AI 模块的可验证性或者说它输出结果的确定性应该怎样去保证呢？

民道： 对，我觉得这是现在最大的一个问题。AI 现在这个模型，幻觉还是很明显的。比如说同样的一个request，我把资金、数据、API 全给你，你给我出一个策略。现在大部分的AI 模型，你问它10 次同样的问题，它给你的策略都不一样。这里面肯定是有一些问题需要解决。但是我觉得跟跟三个月前我去测试这些模型比，现在进步非常非常快，幻觉的降低幅度非常大。你会发现它的策略还是符合我们去交叉验证的，虽然说它的一致性还是有问题，很难确保100 次请求都是100 次同样的结果，但是至少我觉得大差不差，它能够把算术的问题算明白。解决这个问题的一点就是得对agent 的工作流做到每个任务再细化，让幻觉的频率减少。我觉得随着推理模型越来越好，这个问题不需要过度担忧。可能再过一年的时候，包括Grok 最近的3.5 这个版本，如果它真的基于第一原则或者基于物理的所谓原理去做推理的话，可能很多的幻觉问题会慢慢解决。可能后面就是一个大的prompt 进去，就能够输出非常高质量的结果出来。所以这个问题的好处在于基础模型的提升。我们看到其实DeFi 里面有很多项目也都在慢慢开发MCP，MCP 有了之后，其实本质上也是把工作流做了细分。我觉得后面可能会有更专业的MCP 出来，比如说你问我一个策略，我这个MCP 专门就是跑借贷的套利策略，我就能给你一个能够执行的策略，而且这个策略也是经过各种验证的。所以我觉得后面有意思的点在于，以前我们DeFi 也讲模块化或者组合性，你可以用AAVE 的代码或者是Uniswap 代码去组合出来一个另外的AMM。后面在AI 和DeFi 的开发角度来说，可能有很多这种专业的MCP 会出来。MCP 本身就是一个模块，然后可能在组合不同MCP 的时候，有很多新的功能能够实现。模块化我觉得在MCP 这个层面发展非常快。当然这里面会引发新的安全问题，比如说AI 的环境下有没有被投毒，就会有各种各样的风险。但是我觉得跟规模化比，这都是小问题。因为DeFi 的安全其实经过这么多年的发展也都走出来了嘛。所以我觉得AI 这块反而可能很多DeFi 的安全问题会更容易解决。我举个例子，现在DeFi 里面很多传统金融机构不大愿意进来，一个特别大的原因在于，像我们花几百万美金去审计，但是我不能确保这个事情没有风险，永远不能打包票。但传统金融机构不存在这样的，不能说我的银行里钱全偷走了。而DeFi 协议的黑客事件是，协议本身所有的资产都穿透了，大部分一出问题，整个池子都被掏光了。但是如果后面的DeFi 逻辑很多是AI 控制的时候，它在agent 这个层面其实就有很多可以把传统的Web2 的风控方法加进去，比如说提现额，能够通过agent 的方式把这个逻辑写到里面。所以可能更容易把安全的灰度能做得更细，传统DeFi 没法做太细，太细后有gas 费用的问题，还有一些新的bug 和安全问题。

Alex： 明白。最后一个小问题，也是根据您这边聊的内容延展。刚刚提到，原来很多的代码需要到审计机构去进行。根据您的观察，随着AI 的进展，一个DeFi 项目在安全的花费上是越来越高还是越来越低？它的安全成本在目前这一两年当中有没有明显下降？

民道： 我觉得成本下降我们要看几个东西。一个是DeFi 有一个很大的问题，就是所有的审计都很难cover 所有的可能性，不但是代码审计，还要做形式化验证，像形式化验证也很难去穷尽所有的安全边界的逻辑。这就是为什么传统的DeFi 里大家不愿意做太复杂的产品，一复杂的话，逻辑漏洞或者各种edge-case 就出来了。一个DeFi 产品和一个加AI 的DeFi 产品，我觉得后者的安全的审计成本和安全边界要可控得多。我没有具体的数字，因为这还是非常早期，但是我自己的感觉是说，DeFi AI 的产品能实现更多逻辑，不需要花那么多成本去做审计。他们两个的能力和所能做的事情的逻辑是不太一样的。

Alex： 明白。咱们今天聊了很多，从稳定币开始聊，延展到了稳定币跟DeFi，以及DeFi 跟AI，包括AI 跟稳定币的各种交汇的话题。非常感谢今天民道老师能够做客我们的节目，给我们分享那么多真知灼见跟洞察。 Thanks.

民道： 好的，谢谢。