Peregrine Exploration (a blockchain development and research company) announced the official debut of Level USD (lvlUSD), a stablecoin with DeFi-native yield, and an additional $2.6 million in strategic funding led by repeat investor Dragonfly to accelerate its mission to unlock permissionless finance. And Polychain also participated again, along with new investors, including Flowdesk, Echo syndicates Native Crypto (formerly known as Comfy Capital) and Feisty Collective by Path, and angel investors Sam Kazemian (Frax) and Albert Chon (Injective). The company has now raised a total of over $6 million.
Unlike many other new stablecoins that depend on centralized yield sources such as treasuries or CEX basis trades, Level generates yield for its stablecoin exclusively from DeFi. And since its beta launch in Q4 2024, Level has rapidly expanded, growing lvlUSD’s market capitalization to over $80 million and total protocol TVL to $96 million within just five months, with over 10,000 institutional and retail users.
With yield that has consistently outperformed other major yield-bearing stablecoin competitors over the past 3 months and a relatively low-risk profile, Level is now well-positioned for exponential growth as DeFi yield becomes increasingly scalable, sustainable, and secure. Most new stablecoin projects tokenize centralized yields, limiting users to opaque and off-chain mechanisms. In contrast, lvlUSD looks to deliver superior risk-adjusted returns with full on-chain transparency. And Level dramatically minimizes counterparty and operational risk by relying on decentralized sources of yield with excellent track records of reliability, and automating reserve management with audited and open-sourced smart contracts.
Level’s lvlUSD is fully collateralized by fiat-backed stablecoins like USDC and USDT, which are supplied on blue-chip lending protocols like Aave to generate yield. And iIn the coming weeks, Level will also start earning yield on Morpho. For expanding its utility and scale, lvlUSD is already integrated with tier-1 DeFi protocols, including Pendle, Spectra and LayerZero, and can be used as collateral on Morpho.
In the past year, DeFi-native yield has evolved into a highly reliable, scalable and institutional-grade financial sector:
— Lending and yield tokenization protocols achieved exponential growth, demonstrating the robustness of decentralized yield.
— TradFi and institutional players are entering DeFi, showing strong interest in yield-bearing stablecoins, crypto-backed loans, and yield tokenization, reinforcing the long-term viability of DeFi-native yield strategies.
KEY QUOTES:
“As DeFi yield becomes increasingly reliable and institutional interest in on-chain finance surges, Level is positioned to be the stablecoin that fully embraces and scales DeFi-native opportunities. With integrations across the most robust DeFi protocols, Level is an innovative stablecoin designed to provide sustainable, on-chain yield, and minimize the centralized counterparty and operational risk faced by many competitors.”
– Kedian Sun, co-founder of Level
“We’ve backed the Level team since their early days and are thrilled to double down in this strategic round. Level’s rapid growth and deep integrations highlight the strength of their approach to stablecoin yield generation through DeFi-native sources, and their ability to execute at a high level. As stablecoins continue to anchor the crypto ecosystem, we believe Level is well-positioned to drive the next phase of on-chain finance.”
– Tom Schmidt, general partner at Dragonfly
“Since our initial investment, we’ve been consistently impressed by Level’s innovation in the stablecoin space. Their fully on-chain, transparent approach to yield generation sets them apart from competitors relying on opaque, centralized methods. We’re excited to continue supporting Level as they define the standard for secure, DeFi-native yield solutions.”
– Sven Wellmann, Researcher at Polychain
