The venture wings of cryptocurrency exchanges Binance and Kraken have led a $10 million Series A funding round for Usual, a fast-growing stablecoin startup, according to a statement on Monday.

M^0 stablecoin infrastructure company onchain I signed a deal With the usual last week to help expand her support assets she also joined as a supporter.

Launching “out of stealth” in early 2024, Usual offers a fully compatible stablecoin called USD0 that is backed 1:1 by real-world assets, primarily US Treasuries. Its founder, Pierre Pearson, is a former vice president of the presidential political party that led cryptoasset legislation in France and a former member of the French Parliament.

The USD0 market cap surpassed $1 billion in market capitalization last week and is on track to reach $1.5 billion within days, according to CoinGecko. Data. It is the seventh largest stablecoin by market capitalization and the sixth most traded by volume.

The protocol, governed by the USUAL token, is designed to reward its holders with real returns generated by these reserve holdings – unlike the two largest stablecoins, USDT and USDC, which funnel profits to their issuers, Tether and Circle, respectively. USD0 expects an annual return of 80%.

“Current stablecoin models lack transparency and fair distribution of value, privatizing their gains and socializing their losses, and are inconsistent with the spirit on which web3 was built,” the usual CEO said in a statement.

The USD0++ protocol also allows users to stake their USD0 holdings for up to four years to earn rewards of the usual value. USD0++ is sometimes compared to short-term treasury bonds in that it provides the right to the protocol's future profits.

The price of USUAL has risen by about 11% in the past 24 hours.