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What Is Usual USD?

Usual USD (ticker USD0) is a US dollar stablecoin issued by the Usual Protocol. It is backed 1:1 by tokenized real-world assets, principally short-term US Treasury bill products, rather than by cash sitting in a commercial bank account. USD0 opened to the public on Ethereum on July 10, 2024, following a private launch phase earlier that year, and had a circulating supply of roughly 553 million tokens (about 0.55 billion dollars) as of July 2026.

The collateral is where USD0 differs most from Tether or Circle's USDC. Instead of holding bank deposits and buying Treasuries directly, Usual accepts already-tokenized Treasury products as collateral and mints USD0 against them at par. The main collateral asset has been USYC, a tokenized fund invested mainly in reverse repos and US government securities with custody at BNY Mellon. USYC was originally a Hashnote product and was acquired by Circle in January 2025, so USD0's largest single collateral asset is now issued by the company behind USDC. Usual's documentation also lists M0 and Superstate as collateral providers. It is worth noting that the collateral is not purely a tokenized Treasury position: a substantial share sits in other instruments, so read the risk policy rather than assuming a simple one-to-one Treasury backing. Because the collateral is itself an on-chain token, the reserves can be inspected on-chain in real time rather than through periodic accounting attestations, which is the model most fiat-backed stablecoins use.

Users mint USD0 either by depositing eligible RWA collateral directly through the protocol's DaoCollateral contract, or by depositing USDC through a swapper contract, where a collateral provider supplies the RWA on their behalf. Redemption works in reverse: burn USD0 and receive the underlying collateral at par. Usual also maintains an insurance fund, funded from a portion of collateral yield, intended to absorb losses if collateral value falls below par. USD0 is native to Ethereum and is also deployed on Arbitrum, Base, and BNB Chain, with cross-chain transfers routed through Chainlink CCIP and LayerZero.

Usual runs a three-token system, and the distinction between the three is the single most important thing to understand about the project. USD0 is the stablecoin: liquid, redeemable at par against the collateral, and intended to hold $1. bUSD0, formerly called USD0++, is a locked, bond-like token you receive by locking USD0; it accrues rewards but is not a stablecoin. USUAL is the governance token, whose price floats freely and which carries rights over protocol revenue. They are three different assets with three different risk profiles, and people who conflated the first two lost money.

USD0++ was originally sold as a "liquid staking" version of USD0 with a four-year lock, paying holders a daily coupon in USUAL tokens. Many users and DeFi protocols treated it as freely redeemable 1:1 for USD0 at any time, and it was widely used as leveraged collateral in lending markets on that assumption. On January 9 and 10, 2025, Usual ended unconditional 1:1 early redemption and replaced it with two paths: a 1:1 exit that forfeits accrued yield, and an immediate unconditional exit at a hardcoded floor price of $0.87, a floor the protocol said would rise toward $1 over the remaining four-year term. USD0++ promptly fell below its assumed peg, trading down through $0.92 to a low of roughly $0.89 before settling in the low $0.90s.

The fallout was significant. The largest USD0/USD0++ pool on Curve skewed heavily toward USD0++ as holders rushed to sell, and Morpho lending markets that had priced USD0++ at $1 saw a wave of liquidations once the token traded below the liquidation threshold. Community anger focused less on the economics than on the process: the change was announced abruptly, without a governance vote of the kind users expected, and it retroactively repriced a position people had entered at $1. Defenders pointed out that USD0++ had always been documented as a four-year locked instrument, and that a bond-like token trading at a discount to par is normal. Both things were true, which is why the episode is still cited as a case study in how oracle assumptions and unclear token design can combine into forced losses.

The critical distinction: USD0 itself did not depeg. The stablecoin held its $1 peg throughout the January 2025 event, and its Treasury-backed collateral was not in question. What broke was USD0++, the locked yield token, and specifically the market's assumption that it was worth exactly one dollar on demand. Holding USD0 was not the same risk as holding USD0++, and it still is not.

Usual has since restructured the product. Under governance proposal UIP-12 in late 2025, USD0++ was renamed bUSD0 (bonded USD0), with existing holders migrated automatically, and it is now explicitly a bond token maturing on June 11, 2028, at which point 1 bUSD0 redeems for 1 USD0. New deposits mint two tokens: bUSD0 (the bond) and rt-bUSD0 (a redemption token that, held together with bUSD0, allows an early 1:1 exit). The early-redemption floor price is set by the DAO and stood at $0.92 as of mid-2026, up from the $0.87 introduced in January 2025. Usual Labs, the company behind the protocol, was founded in 2022 by Pierre Person, Adli Takkal Bataille, and Hugo Sallé de Chou, and raised a 7 million dollar round in April 2024 led by IOSG Ventures and Kraken Ventures, followed by a 10 million dollar Series A in December 2024 led by Kraken Ventures and Binance Labs. The USUAL governance token launched via Binance Launchpool in November 2024.

Getting Started With Usual USD

USD0 is minted and redeemed through the Usual app rather than bought from an issuer's banking portal. Most users acquire it on-chain.

  1. Step 1: Set up an Ethereum wallet and fund it with ETH for gas plus USDC or eligible RWA collateral.
  2. Step 2: Connect to the Usual app to mint USD0 at par, or swap into USD0 on a decentralized exchange such as Curve or Uniswap.
  3. Step 3: Understand what you are holding. USD0 is the stablecoin. If you lock it into bUSD0 for yield, you are buying a bond that matures in June 2028 and can trade below $1 until then.
  4. Step 4: Redeem USD0 for collateral through the protocol, or sell it on a decentralized exchange, whenever you want out.

How to Get a Usual USD Wallet?

USD0 is a standard ERC-20 token, so any Ethereum-compatible self-custody wallet works. It is also available on Arbitrum, Base, and BNB Chain.

MetaMask

MetaMask is the most common way to hold USD0 and to connect to the Usual app, Curve, or Uniswap. It supports every chain USD0 is deployed on.

Rabby

Rabby is a browser wallet built for DeFi users, with clearer transaction previews and automatic network switching, which is useful when moving USD0 between Ethereum and Layer 2 networks.

Safe

Safe is a smart contract multisig wallet, suited to teams or larger balances where multiple approvals are required before funds move.

Hardware Wallets

A Ledger or Trezor device can be paired with MetaMask or Rabby so that private keys stay offline. This is the sensible option for meaningful holdings.

Usual USD Resources

How to Buy Usual USD?

USD0 is unusual among large stablecoins in that it is essentially a DeFi-native asset. It is minted through the protocol and traded on decentralized exchanges, and it has little presence on centralized exchanges.

Centralized Exchanges

There is no meaningful centralized exchange market for USD0 itself. The practical route is to buy USDC or USDT on a major exchange such as Coinbase, Kraken, or Binance, withdraw it to a self-custody wallet, and then mint or swap into USD0 on-chain. Note that the USUAL governance token, which is a separate and volatile asset, is listed on Binance, Coinbase, and other large exchanges; buying USUAL is not the same as buying USD0.

Decentralized Exchanges

On Ethereum, USD0 trades against USDC on Curve, Uniswap, and Fluid, and against bUSD0 on Uniswap. On Arbitrum it trades on Camelot. You can also mint USD0 at par directly in the Usual app by depositing USDC or eligible RWA collateral, which avoids slippage on larger sizes.

Latest Usual USD News

The most consequential recent changes have been structural. Governance proposal UIP-12, passed in late 2025, renamed USD0++ to bUSD0 and split it into a bond token plus a separate redemption token (rt-bUSD0), giving the instrument an explicit June 11, 2028 maturity and an unambiguous early-exit mechanism. UIP-15, in December 2025, moved the protocol to full DAO ownership. The DAO-set early-redemption floor price for bUSD0 has risen from the $0.87 set during the January 2025 crisis to $0.92 as of mid-2026, and rises toward par as maturity approaches. Usual has also extended the model to euros with EUR0.

USD0's supply has settled at roughly 0.55 billion dollars, well below its early-2025 peak, and the protocol's credibility with DeFi users is still recovering from the USD0++ episode. Anyone considering the yield products should read the risk policy and understand that bUSD0 is a bond with a 2028 maturity, not a dollar. The Usual documentation and governance forum are the best places to track collateral composition, floor price changes, and new proposals.