Market maker DWF Labs hints at synthetic stablecoin

Crypto market maker DWF Labs has plans to launch a stablecoin product that may compete with Ethena’s USDE.

According to Andrei Grachev, co-founder of DWF Labs, the crypto trading and market-making startup has finalized the design for its synthetic stablecoin.

Synthetic stablecoins operate on a soft peg with fiat currencies like the U.S. dollar and are underpinned by collateral assets like Bitcoin (BTC) and other assigned cryptocurrencies.

To maintain parity, synthetic stablecoins rely on opening and closing short-leveraged positions for the underlying collateral. While supposedly decentralized, this design could introduce extra volatility due to its dependence on perpetual trades tied to other tokens.

Grachev shared that DWF Labs’ synthetic dollar would support a basket of collaterals, including the three largest stablecoins: Tether (USDT), Circle’s USD Coin (USDC), and (DAI), which was recently rebranded to USDS by Maker’s switch to the name Sky.

The X post from DWF Labs’ Grachev also listed other underlying assets, such as Ethena’s (USDE), BTC, Ethereum (ETH), a limited list of long-tail altcoins, and blue chips.

DWF Labs had not confirmed if the blue-chip category referred to non-fungible tokens, although the label suggests highly acclaimed NFTs may be involved.

Entering the synthetic dollar market could position DWF Labs against Ethena, the issuer of crypto’s largest on-chain collateralized stablecoin, USDE. Launched for public trading in February, Ethena’s offering has captured $2.69 billion in deposits, with pledged monthly attestations for its product.

Most of this total value locked exists on Ethereum’s blockchain, valued at about $2.58 billion, according to DefiLlama, with the remainder spread across networks like Mantle, Arbitrum, and Blast.

DWF Labs could face the same skepticism that synthetic dollar protocols have encountered within the crypto community. Following Ethena’s launch, decentralized finance leaders like Fantom developer Andre Cronje compared the sector to TerraUSD, the algorithmic stablecoin involved in a $60 billion ecosystem collapse in 2022.