Author: Krisztian Sandor
Compiled by: Tim, PANews
Web3 incubator Obex recently announced the completion of a $37 million funding round, led by Framework Ventures, LayerZero, and Sky Ecosystem Fund. The funds will be used to develop a new generation of yield-generating stablecoins.
The Obex Incubator aims to invest in projects that bring RWA to the blockchain and bring institutional-grade risk control and underwriting standards to this rapidly evolving market.
Obex will become Sky's latest capital builder (formerly MakerDAO, which launched the DAI and USDS stablecoins with a total market capitalization of $9 billion), using its massive reserves to fund Sky's expansion and to generate returns from projects through its strategies.
In an interview, Vance Spencer, co-founder of Framework Ventures, said, "The total market capitalization of stablecoins is approaching the trillion-dollar mark, but I believe the growth momentum of interest-bearing stablecoins will be even more rapid."
Stablecoins are a class of cryptocurrencies that maintain price stability by pegging to external assets such as the US dollar. These tokens are rapidly developing into a large asset class. Currently, stablecoins are primarily pegged to fiat currencies and government bonds and are increasingly used in cross-border payments, while emerging stablecoin categories are attempting to provide holders with more competitive returns through back-end investment strategies.
Among the tokens known as "synthetic stablecoins," the most notable is the $8 billion USDe token issued by Ethena. This token generates returns for its holders by holding spot cryptocurrency while shorting an equivalent amount of derivatives to maintain a neutral trading position.
However, the stabilization mechanisms of some tokens may harbor hidden risks, leading to their decoupling from their pegged prices. Recently, a vulnerability attack on the decentralized protocol Balancer triggered a contagion of risks in the DeFi sector, resulting in a series of synthetic stablecoins, including Stream Finance's USDX and Elixir's deUSD, experiencing decoupling.
Obex was created precisely to avoid such stablecoin collapses. Spencer points out that these incidents demonstrate the need for stricter regulation and a more robust technological foundation in the stablecoin industry. "We cannot allow institutions to issue hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stablecoins only to have them collapse instantly," he emphasizes. "The Sky platform possesses the infrastructure to safely scale these stablecoins."
The Obex incubation program will focus on stablecoins backed by high-quality RWA assets, primarily targeting three key areas: computing resources (such as tokenized GPU infrastructure), energy assets (including municipal-level solar and battery deployment projects), and loans to large fintech companies (which, despite their size, often struggle to access traditional credit).
Obex Incubator will provide startups with 12 weeks of related services, including funding, technology, and access to Sky infrastructure.
Teams that pass the risk and governance audit will be eligible for additional funding from Sky, which recently approved a governance vote to inject up to $2.5 billion of USDS stablecoins into Obex.
Spencer called Obex "the Y Combinator of stablecoins," a comparison to the influential Silicon Valley startup accelerator Y Combinator. "Look around San Francisco, stablecoin ads are everywhere. We receive five to ten project proposals every day," he said. "The industry is booming."
Spencer added, "What's missing right now is the infrastructure—to provide adequate support for these ideas, ensure their security, and truly scale them."


