RealFi launches USDrf as Cardano DeFi TVL halves

RealFi launched two tokens, USDrf and its yield-bearing counterpart sUSDrf, on Cardano on Oct. 1. The tokens are designed to move dollar-linked tokens into loans and other credit assets on and off the blockchain.

Eligible retail users can acquire USDrf and stake it into sUSDrf to earn variable returns tied to a portfolio of credit assets. Verified institutional partners can mint USDrf directly with the issuer and request redemptions at a nominal $1 per token or equivalent assets, creating different redemption paths for retail and institutional holders.

RealFi states the underlying portfolio can include direct loans, private-credit funds, public credit, investment-grade collateralized loan obligation ETFs, U.S. Treasuries and money-market instruments. Retail holders generally must sell USDrf on supported decentralized exchanges to exit, making their liquidity dependent on market price and DEX depth.

Institutional redemption requests require an approved account and whitelisted address. Those requests may be placed into a first-in, first-out queue and are subject to daily or monthly limits. The issuer may suspend minting or redemptions under reserve or liquidity stress, sanctions concerns, security incidents or wider market disruption.

sUSDrf is described by RealFi as a junior, loss-absorbing token. Holders face a seven-day cooldown to convert sUSDrf back into USDrf, and the conversion is not guaranteed to remain one-for-one. RealFi states that sUSDrf yield can fall to zero and that principal can be impaired if protocol first-loss reserves are exhausted. USDrf receives greater protection but is not presented as an insured bank deposit or a guaranteed dollar exit for retail users.

Cardano’s stablecoin supply is approaching an all-time high near $70 million, while total value locked on Cardano stands at about $67 million, down more than 50% from roughly $150 million in May. Other smart-contract platforms continue to support DeFi markets measured in the billions of dollars.

Charles Hoskinson, Cardano’s founder, invested several million dollars in RealFi and the project has already serviced loans in Kenya and Uganda during development, RealFi materials state. Hoskinson described the initiative as part of Cardano’s effort to ‘bank the unbanked’ and said returns will come from lending outside crypto markets rather than primarily from token incentives.

RealFi published reserve and stability mechanisms on a public attestation page that names HT Digital. As of the Oct. 1 launch the page did not display a dated total reserve quantity. Public disclosures did not include enough current figures on first-loss capital or settled staking balances to calculate how much credit deterioration sUSDrf could absorb before pressures would reach USDrf holders.

RealFi currently excludes users from the United States, the EU and European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong and other restricted jurisdictions. Where local law limits retail offerings of capital-markets products, sUSDrf is limited to accredited, institutional or other eligible investor categories.

RealFi’s near-term operational tests include loan repayments, defaults, decentralized-exchange liquidity and institutional redemption queues. The project has outlined longer-term plans to link the product with Bitcoin DeFi and a privacy platform called Midnight so users could borrow against Bitcoin-linked assets and use privacy-preserving credentials to meet identity requirements; those integrations remain under development.