USD.AI, the decentralized stablecoin protocol behind USDai, has paid out more than $20 million in cumulative yield to users amid growing demand for its GPU-backed lending model.
USDai Staking Yield Hits 8% APY
According to analytics firm
Entropy Advisors, staking USDai currently returns about 8% APY, a figure the firm expects to climb toward 11% as more GPU-backed loans are deployed.
USDai is the
synthetic dollar issued by
USD.AI, a protocol that routes stablecoin deposits into loans secured by physical GPU hardware. Depositors mint USDai 1:1 from USDC or USDT, then stake it into sUSDai, the
yield-bearing token that earns from both Treasury bills held in reserve and interest paid by AI infrastructure borrowers.
GPU loans now make up close to half of all reserves, sitting alongside PYUSD and wrapped US T-Bills, with eight loans worth $370 million in the pipeline, according to a
Dune dashboard. That marks a change from late 2025, when
Treasuries backed roughly 99% of the staked supply.
The protocol’s on-chain footprint has grown alongside the loan book. USDai supply stands at about 201.1 million, with 6.88 million staked into sUSDai. Secondary trading has cleared roughly $436.5 million in lifetime volume across 8 supported DEXs and 9 token pairs.
Most of that activity lives on Arbitrum. Of about 306.5 million in supply tracked across chains, Arbitrum accounted for nearly 298 million, with smaller balances on Plasma, Ethereum and Base. USDai moves between networks through LayerZero’s OFT standard, and 30-day bridging data showed net inflows of $141,100 to Arbitrum against outflows from Ethereum and Base.
USDai’s DEX Liquidity Stays Thin Despite Large Supply
Meanwhile, USDai’s on-chain liquidity stays modest relative to its supply. USDai pools held about $1.43 million in total value, with $760,236 in direct USDai liquidity on Arbitrum, spread across venues including
Uniswap, Curve, PancakeSwap and Fluid.
USDai sits within a wider push to tie stablecoin yield to AI infrastructure demand rather than lending markets alone. Last year, the protocol
partnered with PayPal to integrate PYUSD and with Tokyo-listed Quantum Solutions on a $200 million GPU financing facility for Japan’s AI sector.
USDai’s roughly 8% staking yield sits well above what the largest yield-bearing stablecoins pay. Among the biggest pools by size, Sky Lending’s SUSDS holds about $6.2 billion at a 3.60% APY, Circle’s USYC about $2.93 billion at 3.13%, Ethena’s sUSDe roughly $1.75 billion at 3.57%, Ondo’s USDY around $1.11 billion at 3.55%, and BlackRock’s tokenized BUIDL fund about $830 million at 3.56%,
according to DefiLlama.
The gap is largely due to the collateral behind each token. The largest yield-bearing stablecoins lean on US Treasuries, money-market instruments, or overcollateralized on-chain lending, which keep returns close to short-term rates. USDai instead draws much of its yield from GPU-collateralized loans to AI infrastructure operators, a private-credit segment that pays more but carries more risks as well.
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