Usual (USUAL): the USD0 stablecoin, collateral that is mostly loans and a dispute with its developer

Usual USD0 is a dollar stablecoin that its makers describe as backed by tokenised US Treasury bills, built by a French company and run on paper by a token-holder DAO. Its promise is that the interest on those bills goes to holders of the USUAL token instead of an issuer’s shareholders. On DefiLlama, the protocol held about $83 million on 31 October 2026, roughly 96% below its peak of $1.87 billion on 7 January 2025.

The damage came in stages. In January 2025 Usual changed the exit terms of USD0++, its four-year bond token, and that token fell to about $0.89 on 9 January. USUAL traded near $0.0102 at 00:23 UTC on 31 October 2026, according to DefiLlama, about 99% below the high near $1.57 of 20 December 2024 in DefiLlama’s hourly data. And in October 2026, holders on Usual’s own forum asked the DAO to end the mandate of Usual Labs, the company that builds the product. No reply from Labs appears in that thread up to 30 October.

What Usual USD0 is, and how USUAL differs from it

Three tokens carry the design, and headlines have mixed them up before. USD0 is the stablecoin: a token meant to stay at $1, redeemable against the collateral behind it. If the concept is new to you, start with our beginner guide to stablecoins. bUSD0, called USD0++ until December 2025, is a bond: you lock USD0 until 11 June 2028 and receive a daily coupon paid in USUAL. USUAL is the governance token, capped at 3 billion units since November 2025.

The idea came from a comparison with Tether and Circle. Usual’s documents say those two issuers earned over $10 billion in 2023 from reserves funded by their users, who received none of it. Usual’s answer was what it calls a Liquid Deposit Token: the stablecoin pays nothing by itself, and the yield flows to people who own USUAL. By 2026 the pitch had grown. Usual’s June 2026 announcement of its V2 app describes the goal as a DeFi bank owned by its users.

USD0 itself pays no interest, which separates it from the products in our guide to yield-bearing stablecoins. Usual added savings versions, sUSD0 and sEUR0, in November 2025. Around the dollar sit newer lines: ETH0, an ether-backed token from May 2025; EUR0, a euro token from October 2025; USD0a, a market-neutral strategy; and Usual Credit, a lending line launched in January 2026 on the Fira fixed-rate infrastructure. They remain small: DefiLlama listed about $2.1 million for ETH0 and about $0.23 million for EUR0 on 31 October 2026.

How USD0 is minted, backed and redeemed

There are two doors. The direct path is for permissioned users, who deposit tokenised T-bills in the DaoCollateral contract and receive USD0 one for one, currently with no fee. The indirect path takes USDC: a collateral provider supplies the T-bill tokens against that USDC and collects USUAL incentives. Orders there start at 100,000 USD0, so smaller holders buy and sell on decentralised exchanges instead.

Usual’s USD0 factsheet, last updated on 16 February 2026, sets the rules: a maximum average portfolio duration of 0.33 years, no tolerance for credit or currency risk, and collateral that can be redeemed or sold within five business days at most. These are the project’s own statements, not a third-party attestation.

The tokens DefiLlama counted on 31 October 2026 were M from M^0 ($39.6 million), USTBL from Spiko ($32.6 million), USYC from Hashnote ($10.7 million) and residual amounts of EURC and EUR0. That mix has moved since the factsheet, which names USYC as the primary collateral, and it is only a small part of what backs USD0 today, as the section on TVL shows. The DAO approved USTBL, a Spiko money market fund, under UIP-14 in December 2025.

If the peg comes under stress, Usual lists several defences, among them arbitrage, an insurance fund and a last-resort procedure called Counter Bank Run. The insurance fund receives about 20% of protocol yield and targets 0.33% to 5.33% of USD0 supply. Usual’s own stress test puts a one-month rate shock of 100 basis points at about 0.33% of losses. Counter Bank Run would burn the insurance fund, stop minting and push all activity to secondary markets.

bUSD0, the former USD0++: a bond that can trade below par

Depositing 1 USD0 now returns 1 bUSD0 and 1 rt-bUSD0, a separate redemption token that can be traded. At maturity on 11 June 2028, 1 bUSD0 redeems for 1 USD0. Before that date, a primary-market exit needs both tokens together. Anyone holding bUSD0 without the rt-bUSD0 has to sell on the market. The bUSD0 factsheet still lists a DAO-set floor of 0.92 USD0 on the primary market, but its table of early exits offers no redemption at that price.

The coupon has shrunk. Since UIP-11 the whole bond bucket, bUSD0 and ETH0 together, shares about 130,000 USUAL a day, paid in a token near one cent. Positions used in the Stability Loan or Usual Zero Rate markets receive no USUAL at all and behave like plain zero-coupon bonds. Usual’s factsheet calculated that a price of $0.92 with about 2.3 years left implied roughly 3.5% a year. That figure is from February 2026 and the time to maturity has shortened since.

January 2025: the USD0++ depeg, and why USD0 held

For its first months, USD0++ lived on an assumption. Lending markets and other DeFi apps treated the token as worth about $1, and some, as Curve founder Michael Egorov noted, hardcoded that price into their oracles. Yet there was no early redemption at par. Usual later wrote that before November 2024 “unstaking was not possible, even as parity with USD0 was maintained”.

On 9 and 10 January 2025, Usual Labs changed the terms. Cointelegraph reported that the redemption value went from $0.995 to a new floor of $0.87, set to rise toward $1 over four years. Holders got two ways out: leave at the floor at once, or leave at $1 by giving up accrued rewards. Usual’s documentation now said the floor “is set manually”, The Block reported.

USD0++ fell to a low of $0.89 on 9 January, Cointelegraph said; The Block recorded a drop of 8.5% to $0.915 on decentralised exchanges on 10 January. Positions on Curve and Pendle were liquidated for millions of dollars. Critics pointed less at the discount than at the method. Egorov said “USD0++ should likely have a discount”, while researcher Ignas asked: “Where was the DAO vote?”

USD0 kept its peg. DefiLlama’s price series shows it between about $0.995 and $1.006 in January and early February 2025. Headlines that said USD0 had lost its peg described the bond token, which is a different asset with a different promise.

Usual moved quickly after that. A revenue switch started on 13 January. Early unstaking at 1:1, paid for in USUAL, followed on 14 January. On 23 January Usual said the mechanism had removed $250 million of USD0++ and captured 50 million USUAL, and it admitted that the transition had “caused significant imbalances and panic”. The floor itself moved later: UIP-6, voted from 3 to 6 April 2025 with 116.5 million votes for and 9.5 million against, raised it from $0.87 to $0.92.

From $1.87 billion to $83 million: what the TVL really says

DefiLlama showed a rise of 93% in seven days on 31 October 2026. That number is an artefact of the data, not growth. The daily series sits at about $83 million from 17 to 30 October, with half-value readings of $42.8 million on 23 October, $43.1 million on 24 October and $43.4 million on 30 October. On each of those three days the token breakdown simply lacks the M position, worth about $40 million, which is back in the next reading. The 93% compares the 31 October figure with the 24 October dip. DefiLlama does not explain the missing readings. Our guide on how to measure DeFi TVL, volume and fees explains how such figures are built.

The real trend is a slow decline. Our reading of it, which is analysis and not a statement from Usual, has four causes. Holders could leave USD0++ at par by paying in USUAL. The falling price of USUAL then cut the value of the reward that justified a four-year lock: the token went from about $1.57 on 20 December 2024 to about $0.17 by 13 March 2025. In late 2025 Usual reduced incentives on purpose, ending Curve and Fluid rewards in November and December. And other dollar products competed for the same deposits.

Usual’s own diagnosis, in its November 2025 post on UIP-11, was blunt: “Issuance outpaced demand. Emissions became extraction.”

Why $541.6 million of USD0 sits on $83 million of TVL

DefiLlama counted $541.6 million of USD0 in circulation on 31 October 2026, on Ethereum and Arbitrum, at a price of $0.9994. That is more than six times the protocol’s TVL, and a month earlier the supply stood at $546.4 million, so this is no passing distortion. TVL counts only the T-bill tokens. The rest of the collateral is something else, and it can be read on-chain.

We read the collateral treasury, the address given in Usual’s technical documents, on 31 October 2026 at about 00:45 UTC. It held 444.7 million U0R and 14.9 million eUSD0-4 next to the T-bill tokens. U0R is the vault token of the Usual Zero Rate market on Fira, approved as USD0 collateral by UIP-16 in January 2026. eUSD0-4 is the matching vault on Euler. Both are claims on loans of USD0 to people who posted bUSD0 as security, with the DAO as lender. Counted at $1 each, which is our assumption, they make about $459 million. Add the $83 million and the total is about $543 million, in line with the supply.

So about 85% of the collateral wallet is loan positions, not T-bill tokens. The other side of the loop shows up in the bond: 511.7 million USD0, or about 94% of the 541.9 million on Ethereum, is locked in the bUSD0 contract, and 495.7 million bUSD0 sits in the Fira lending market. Those loans value bUSD0 at $1 whatever it trades at, and the factsheet says liquidation before maturity is not possible under that fixed price, although UIP-18 lets the DAO force liquidation at maturity. The fee is 0.10% a year.

This is disclosed, though not in one place. Usual’s risk policy listed eUSD0 at 46.46% of collateral in June 2025, and the bUSD0 factsheet describes a rehypothecation design meant to ensure that “free-floating USD0 remains backed by RWA collateral”. On that test the figures hold: about $30 million of USD0 lies outside the bond contract, against $83 million of T-bill tokens. But the USD0 factsheet presents the collateral as 100% short-duration Treasury bills and equivalent sovereign instruments, with zero tolerance for credit risk, and a wallet that is 85% loans is a different picture.

Coindaro does not claim that USD0 is under-collateralised. Our reading, which is analysis and not a statement from Usual, is that the T-bill slice covers today’s free float, and the question is what happens if much more than $83 million of bUSD0 turns back into free USD0 before June 2028. Usual should be able to answer that with a public reconciliation.

USUAL tokenomics: supply, insiders and what holders actually get

USUAL launched with a Binance Launchpool in mid-November 2024 and was listed on Binance on 19 November, with about 494.6 million tokens in circulation. UIP-11, in November 2025, cut the maximum supply from 4 billion to 3 billion and replaced variable issuance with a fixed amount of about 1.35 million tokens a day, about half the earlier rate. Distribution runs to June 2028.

Insiders, meaning team and investors, hold about 30.25% of the total, or roughly 910.8 million USUAL, according to the factsheet, which is marked as a draft. They had a one-year cliff from 25 November 2024, with a third, about 207 million tokens, released on 25 November 2025. The rest arrives monthly until June 2028. We could not find the monthly amounts in Usual’s documents.

Holding USUAL alone earns nothing. Staking it into USUALx brings USUAL emissions, with a 10% fee to unstake. The revenue share goes only to USUALx that is also locked for one, three, six or 12 months, and it is paid weekly in USD0. Usual’s docs set that share at 30% of revenue, with the other 70% going to the DAO treasury.

Buybacks exist, on a modest scale. UIP-19, written by Usual Labs and closed on 6 September 2026 with 55.1 million votes for and 4.3 million against, says that since 5 August, pending operations included, the mechanism had involved about $140,000 of buybacks and burned about 5.2 million USUAL. It sends all USUAL generated when bUSD0 is released early to the burn, where a third went before. It also lets Labs set the threshold that drives this flow at its discretion, on condition that changes “increase NAV per USUAL in circulation”.

The same proposal puts the treasury at about $30 million, excluding USUAL itself. That is Labs’ figure, which we did not audit. DefiLlama showed a market value of about $19.9 million for the token at about 00:40 UTC on 31 October 2026.

Revenue: from about $25 million a year to about $6 million

In January 2025, Usual projected about $5 million of revenue a month, and it paid $1.15 million to stakers in one week that month. Its February 2026 factsheet gives about $5.5 million to $6 million a year, down from about $25 million before UIP-11. Usual says the DAO cut Stability Loan and Usual Zero Rate interest on purpose, to reduce structural selling by 87.5% and accept lower revenue.

DefiLlama’s figures for 31 October 2026 are lower still: $334,600 of revenue over 30 days, roughly $4 million a year by our arithmetic, and $8.5 million over the last 12 months. All-time revenue stands at $61.6 million, so about 86% of what this protocol has earned came before the last year. With only a 0.10% fee on the loan side, the T-bill tokens now produce most of the yield, by our reading.

Who controls Usual: the DAO, the Labs and a multisig

Usual Labs is the trading name of Up Only Co, a French simplified joint-stock company (SAS) registered in Paris, and the protocol’s terms also name a French-law association that develops the DAO. Usual’s roadmap says the company was founded in 2022 by three co-founders, without naming them. A press release issued by Usual on 19 March 2024 named CEO Pierre Person, Adli Takkal Bataille and COO Hugo Sallé de Chou among its founders. Person sat in the French National Assembly as a deputy for Paris from 2017 to 2022. The release calls Sallé de Chou a co-founder of the French fintech Pumpkin; we could not confirm his role today.

Funding is small for the size the protocol reached. Usual’s documents total $17 million: a $7 million seed in April 2024 led by IOSG Ventures and Kraken Ventures, and a $10 million Series A in December 2024 led by Binance Labs and Kraken Ventures.

UIP-15, open for voting from 23 December 2025 and closed six days later with 57.8 million votes for and 0.2 million against, redrew the structure. Usual says the DAO now owns 100% of protocol assets, a foundation acts as its legal executor, and Labs is a service provider that needs an explicit mandate, scope and budget. The same vote paid Labs $2.77 million from the treasury: $1.21 million of licence royalties and $1.56 million of reimbursed costs. Two weeks later UIP-17 had the DAO buy the Fira infrastructure from Labs at cost, for $1.72 million, by 48.4 million votes to 7.8 million.

The transfer of the rest of the intellectual property to the DAO was promised before the end of the first quarter of 2026, through a separate agreement. We could not confirm that it happened, and no such vote appears on Snapshot up to UIP-19, the latest.

Ownership on paper and control in the contracts are different things. Usual’s technical documentation gives the top administrator role, DEFAULT_ADMIN, to the “Usual Multisig”. That role can manage every other role, unpause contracts, set the redemption fee, turn on Counter Bank Run and carry out an emergency withdrawal on the USD0++ contract. A delay of three days applies before the role can be granted to a new address. On-chain, the address holding that role is a Safe that needs 8 signatures out of 15, read on 31 October 2026, and the collateral treasury shows the same setting. We found no published list of who the signers are, and no timelock on other actions. Our glossary explains what a multisig wallet is.

Votes are thin as well. UIP-19 drew 56 voters. Insiders hold about 30% of the supply, and at about one cent a token, a modest sum could move a close vote. The record does contain real dissent: in March 2025 voters rejected UIP-3, a plan to stake treasury assets into USUALx, by 137.8 million votes to 53.0 million.

October 2026: forum members ask the DAO to drop Usual Labs

Usual opened a public governance forum on 31 July 2026. The tension reached it within two months. On 18 September, a user posting as Wind asked the DAO to remove Pierre Person as CEO of Usual Labs, citing weak execution and a token down more than 99% from its high. These are the claims of one holder, not findings. The Usual_Team account replied the same day that Person runs Labs, not the protocol or the DAO, that Labs is a separate company, and that the question “cannot be decided through a governance proposal”.

Labs did answer in the first thread. Johnny, an account with the forum title Usual Lab, wrote on 28 and 29 September that the DAO can change the mandate or pick another provider but cannot remove a company’s management, and that Labs “has consistently delivered the work it was paid to carry out”. WojtekF replied that Labs had delivered “barely half” of what its roadmaps promised. On 5 October Johnny said dropped products “failed to demonstrate sufficient traction, materiality, or growth potential”. These are the two sides’ claims; we have not tested them.

On 16 October WojtekF went at the route the DAO does control. The pre-proposal asks for the revocation of Labs’ service-provider mandate because of a “sustained and material failure of communication and engagement”. It relies on the UIP-15 rule that any such mandate needs a scope, a budget and reporting. The thread had 12 posts by 30 October, several complaining of silence, and one member suggested organising with a lawyer. No account carrying the Usual Lab title has replied in that thread up to that date. The text is a draft and has not reached Snapshot, whose latest vote is still UIP-19.

Holders are also writing their own agenda, including a 12-month marketing mandate, tokenised stocks in V2 and a burn of tokens already bought back. None has gone to a vote. Usual’s blog has had no post since 6 August 2026, though Labs did file UIP-19 in the weeks after.

Audits and the May 2025 incident

Usual’s documents claim more than 20 security audits, and the reports on its audit index open. They include Cantina, Paladin, Halborn, Sherlock, Spearbit, Hexens and Blackthorn, plus an economic review of the Stability Loan by OAK Security. One Cantina review of USD0++ adjustments is dated 31 January 2025, three weeks after the depeg. The latest entries date from November 2025, covering sUSD0, sEUR0, USD0a and the bUSD0 upgrade. Nothing there is labelled for the V2 app. UIP-18 cites three reviews of Fira from November 2025, by Cantina, yAudit and Sherlock, with no critical or high finding, but those are not on Usual’s index. Usual’s factsheet says Sherlock’s team handles triage and severity on its bug bounty.

One loss is on record. On 27 May 2025, a user took about $43,000 through a capped unwrap route in a USD0++ investment vault. Usual called it an arbitrage, paused the vault and said no user or protocol funds were lost. DefiLlama files it on its hacks list under input validation.

Regulation: what is and is not established

The 2024 release called USD0 “fully compliant” without naming a regime. Usual’s documents say euro deposits and withdrawals for EUR0 run through a European electronic money institution licensed under MiCA, with euros held at a minimum of 102%. That is the project’s own statement, and the institution is not named in the passage we read.

How USD0 compares with other stablecoins

USD0 is small and shrinking slightly. Ethena, whose USDe uses a delta-neutral trade rather than T-bills, is more than eight times its size. Sky’s USDS is about 12 times larger. These are supply figures, and about 94% of USD0’s is locked in bUSD0.

Our risk rating and what to watch

We rate Usual 4 out of 5. It keeps a working stablecoin and a peg that has held, with audits you can read. Against that stand collateral that is mostly loans secured by its own bond, control through a Safe whose signers are unnamed, falling revenue and a public dispute between holders and the developer.

Risk differs by token. A USD0 holder depends on the T-bill slice and on how the loan book behaves. A bUSD0 holder takes on price risk until June 2028 and a coupon in a depressed token. A USUAL holder faces dilution until mid-2028 and a governance fight. Coindaro makes no price forecast, and nothing on this page is investment advice.

Three things would change the picture: a public reconciliation of USD0 supply with its collateral, a Labs reply on the mandate thread, and a Snapshot vote on that mandate. The hard date is 11 June 2028, when the bUSD0 series matures and redeems 1:1 for USD0.