Summary
The third week of December highlighted continued strength in stablecoin yield, growing demand for institutional-grade lending markets, and renewed momentum across major DeFi protocols. USDC and USDT remained the backbone of onchain yield, with capital concentrating in high-quality lending and LP strategies across Ethereum, Base, and emerging networks.
On the protocol side, Maple Finance and Curve continued to set the benchmark for competitive, capital-efficient yields, Euler expanded its full lending stack to HyperEVM, and Lido advanced toward its next major protocol upgrade with the Lido V3 soft launch vote now live.
For Yield.xyz, these developments further expand the opportunity set available to builders. With support for lending, fixed-income, and LP strategies across major venues like Maple, Curve, Aave, and Morpho, developers can now access a broader and more diversified yield landscape through a single API.
Stablecoin Developments
Circle’s USDC continues to anchor a wide range of competitive yield strategies across DeFi, with the majority of productive capital deployed on Ethereum mainnet and Base. Steakhouse Morpho Vaults remain a standout, currently offering yields up to 5.4% APY, while Maple Finance provides 6.2% APY on USDC deposits. Higher-yielding opportunities are also emerging through Fluid, where lending strategies are reaching up to 8.2% APY. All of these USDC opportunities are available to developers directly through the Yield.xyz API.
Tether’s USDT remains the dominant stablecoin on Plasma, with nearly $400 million in deposits earning approximately 3.7% APY on Aave V3. On Ethereum mainnet, USDT yield continues to scale, with over $1.5 billion deposited into Maple Finance at roughly 5.7% APY. Curve’s USDT liquidity pools are also delivering yields in the 5% range. With Curve LP strategies now supported by Yield.xyz, developers can access all of these USDT yield opportunities through a single integration.
Agora’s AUSD continues to gain traction on Monad, where it is now the largest Morpho vault on the network with $24 million in deposits. AUSD has emerged as the leading stablecoin on Monad, with Morpho-based yield strategies currently offering up to 6% APY, reinforcing its role as the network’s primary yield-bearing USD asset.
Sky Ecosystem: Sky Frontier Foundation released its first State of the Sky Ecosystem report, providing a year-end overview of Sky Protocol’s growth in 2025. Key highlights include an 86% increase in USDS supply, $168 million in annualized protocol net profit representing 24.4% year-over-year growth, and a dramatic expansion in buybacks from $367,000 to $92.2 million.
Protocol Developments
Maple Finance continues to scale as one of the largest and most competitive institutional lending venues in DeFi. USDC deposits on Maple now exceed $2.7 billion, with current yields around 6.2% APY. Maple’s lending products are fully accessible through the Yield.xyz API, allowing developers to integrate institutional-grade yield without custom engineering.
Curve Finance has emerged as one of the most competitive venues for earning LP yield on Bitcoin-backed assets. The crvUSD/cbBTC pool currently offers approximately 31% APY with $220 million in TVL, while the crvUSD/WBTC pool is delivering yields up to 38% APY with $105 million in TVL. These pools represent some of the highest real yields available in BTC-denominated strategies.
Euler Finance expanded its footprint this week with the launch of its full lending stack on HyperEVM, in partnership with HypurrFi. The deployment includes Euler Lending, EulerSwap, and EulerEarn, as HypurrFi was the first major lending protocol to go live on HyperEVM. The team plans to further enhance capital efficiency by leveraging the Euler Vault Kit as adoption grows.
Lido Finance released a governance update announcing that the onchain vote to activate Lido V3 Phase 1 (Soft Launch) on mainnet is now live. If approved, the proposal will introduce stVaults, non-custodial and modular staking vaults that allow stakers to choose specific operators or staking strategies built around stETH. Lido’s governance token, LDO, was also listed on Robinhood this week, expanding its accessibility to a broader audience.
Build With Yield.xyz Today
The developments this week reinforce how quickly yield markets are maturing across lending, LP strategies, and network-native stablecoins. Capital continues to concentrate in high-quality venues, while new networks like Monad and HyperEVM are seeing early demand for structured, productive yield.
Yield.xyz provides builders with a single API to access these opportunities across 75+ networks. The platform standardizes yield transactions, automates reward compounding, supports cross-chain delivery, and includes dual-sided LP strategies across venues like Curve and PancakeSwap. Teams building wallets, fintech applications, trading platforms, neobanks, or institutional tooling can integrate broad yield functionality and go live faster by building on Yield.xyz.