A new crypto incubator has emerged with $37 million in funding and access to billions in deployment capital, positioning itself as a launchpad for the next generation of yield-generating stablecoins backed by real-world assets.
Obex, backed by Framework Ventures, LayerZero, and the Sky ecosystem, plans to fund early-stage teams building stablecoins collateralized by unconventional assets: tokenized GPU infrastructure, municipal-scale solar and battery deployments, and loans to large fintech companies.
The initiative arrives at a critical inflection point for the stablecoin sector. The market has swelled past $260 billion, yield-bearing tokens are attracting billions in capital, and the recent GENIUS Act has provided regulatory clarity that is accelerating institutional adoption. But a wave of high-profile failures has also exposed dangerous vulnerabilities in how synthetic stablecoins are designed and managed.
"While we see stablecoins going to a trillion dollar market, I think yield-bearing stablecoins are moving even faster," Vance Spencer, co-founder of Framework Ventures, told CoinDesk in an interview.
Y Combinator for Stablecoins
Spencer described Obex as a "Y Combinator for stablecoins," referencing the influential Silicon Valley accelerator that has helped launch companies like Coinbase, Stripe, and Airbnb. The comparison reflects both the program's structure - a 12-week cohort model offering capital, technical resources, and mentorship—and its ambition to systematically produce successful ventures in a nascent sector.
"You look around San Francisco and see stablecoin ads everywhere. We receive five-to-ten pitches every day," Spencer said. "The energy is there."
"What's missing is infrastructure: to underwrite these ideas properly, to ensure they're safe, and to actually bring them to scale."
The incubator will serve as the latest capital allocator for Sky, the entity formerly known as MakerDAO that operates the DAI and USDS stablecoins with a combined market cap approaching $9 billion. Teams that pass Obex's risk and governance reviews may qualify for additional deployment capital from Sky, which has authorized in a governance vote to deploy up to $2.5 billion in USDS into qualified projects.
That represents an extraordinary backstop for early-stage ventures. Most crypto startups struggle to access institutional-scale liquidity; Obex participants could scale rapidly by tapping Sky's vast reserves while generating yield for the protocol.
Avoiding the Failures
The timing of Obex's launch is not coincidental. The synthetic stablecoin sector has been rocked by a cascading series of collapses that began earlier this month when Stream Finance disclosed a $93 million loss tied to an external fund manager.
The fallout was swift and brutal. Stream had borrowed funds from Elixir, a DeFi liquidity provider, to back its own stablecoin. When Stream froze withdrawals, Elixir's deUSD lost its dollar peg and crashed 98%. The contagion spread further when a $128 million exploit hit Balancer's V2 pools, triggering forced liquidations that depegged Stable Labs' USDX.
The episode exposed critical weaknesses in how some yield-bearing stablecoins manage risk, particularly those that rely on opaque off-chain fund managers or employ excessive leverage to generate returns.
"We cannot have people creating $500 million stablecoins and blowing them up," Spencer said. "Sky has the infrastructure to scale these safely."
Real-World Asset Focus
Unlike synthetic stablecoins that generate yield through crypto-native strategies like funding rate arbitrage, Obex will focus on tokens backed by tangible, high-quality collateral in three key areas.
The first is compute credits - tokenized representations of GPU infrastructure that power artificial intelligence workloads. As demand for AI computing has surged, GPU capacity has become a scarce and valuable asset class. A stablecoin backed by compute credits would effectively allow holders to gain exposure to AI infrastructure demand while maintaining dollar-peg stability.
The second category is energy assets, specifically municipal-scale solar installations and battery storage systems. These assets generate predictable cash flows through power purchase agreements and can be tokenized to serve as collateral for stablecoins that pass yield through to holders.
The third focus area is fintech credit - loans to large financial technology companies that often lack access to traditional credit lines despite their scale. By underwriting these loans on-chain, Obex-backed stablecoins could tap into a substantial market that has been historically underserved by traditional banks.
This approach represents a philosophical shift from the crypto-native strategies that have dominated yield-bearing stablecoin design. Rather than relying on perpetual swap funding rates or recursive DeFi lending loops, Obex's model grounds yield generation in real-world economic activity.
Growing Market, Elevated Risks
The stablecoin sector has undergone a dramatic transformation over the past year. Overall supply has grown for seven consecutive months, reaching approximately $300 billion according to industry estimates. Stablecoin transaction volumes exceeded $27 trillion in 2024, surpassing the combined volumes of Visa and Mastercard.
Within this expanding market, yield-bearing stablecoins have emerged as one of the fastest-growing segments. Ethena's USDe has surged to over $12 billion in supply, becoming the third-largest stablecoin overall and attracting capital from investors seeking returns that exceed traditional money market rates.
But the recent depegging events have underscored that yield comes with risk. The Stream Finance collapse demonstrated how quickly confidence can evaporate when backing strategies rely on external parties or leverage. And the comparison to Terra's algorithmic stablecoin, which collapsed in 2022 and triggered billions in losses, remains a cautionary tale for the entire sector.
Obex's emphasis on institutional-grade underwriting and risk management is designed to address these concerns. By providing early-stage teams with access to Sky's infrastructure and governance frameworks, the incubator aims to ensure that new stablecoins are built on more solid foundations than their predecessors.
Final thoughts
The 12-week program will accept applications from teams building stablecoin projects in the three target areas. Participants will receive capital, technical support, and access to Sky's smart contract infrastructure and governance systems.
Projects that demonstrate strong risk management and pass governance reviews will be eligible for additional capital deployment from Sky's $2.5 billion authorization. That funding could allow successful participants to scale rapidly in a market that is clearly hungry for yield-bearing alternatives to traditional stablecoins.
Whether Obex can deliver on its promise to become the premier launchpad for next-generation stablecoins remains to be seen. But with substantial backing, access to one of DeFi's largest treasuries, and a clear mandate to avoid the failures that have plagued the sector, the incubator enters the market with significant advantages.
"The fundamental factor is how to grow DeFi to gigantic scale," Spencer said. "The infrastructure is finally here."