Usual Official

Stablecoins are on track to become the backbone of tomorrow’s financial system, but the real battleground will not be “who issues the most dollars.” It will be who distributes them best, who integrates them everywhere, and above all who builds the services that make them useful. In a market that is unlikely to remain concentrated, stablecoins will compete less on the peg and more on the credit and yield rails attached to them.
USD0 was designed with that in mind. It is not just a settlement asset. It is meant to be a credit and capital vehicle for the Usual ecosystem. And like money in the real economy, USD0 only becomes infrastructure when it circulates. That circulation depends on access to credit. Without a native borrowing lane, stable assets remain passive. Users can hold them, but they cannot efficiently reuse them.
This is what Usual Zero Rate unlocks.
As part of Usual Labs’ rollout of Fira, UZR is now live as Usual’s first native credit primitive. Credit that previously required external partners is now internalized via Fira, protocol-owned, DAO-governed, and aligned with Usual’s long-term architecture. Users can borrow USD0 at a zero rate, enabling capital-efficient strategies without reflexive emissions incentives.
In practice, UZR also reframes bUSD0 as a zero-coupon bond, a simple maturity-based instrument that replaces earlier, more complex mechanics that created governance-token selling pressure. The result is a cleaner system with a tighter loop, where borrowing demand, liquidity, and fee capture remain inside Usual, supporting TVL concentration and value accrual to the ecosystem.
TL;DR
UZR is Usual’s first native credit primitive: you can borrow USD0 at zero rate.Credit that previously relied on external venues is now internalized via Fira: protocol-owned, DAO-governed, and aligned with Usual’s long-term architecture.bUSD0 is repositioned as a zero-coupon bond (discount to par): simpler, more readable mechanics that reduce reflexive incentive dynamics.Rollout is progressive: liquidity is added in tranches from Wednesday, January 14, 2026 through Sunday evening, January 18, then scales from Monday, January 19 based on migration demand.Euler to Fira migration is available immediately but is one-way only. Fira’s Borrow and Repay UI goes live on Thursday, January 22, 2026.
Why Zero Rate
In DeFi, the rate often becomes a product in itself. Users stop borrowing to deploy capital and start borrowing to play rates, optimize loops, and farm subsidies. The outcome is predictable: opaque execution, incentives captured by farmers, and structural sell pressure on the governance token.
A zero rate is a deliberate choice to break that dynamic. It removes rate speculation from the core product, cleans up the carry trade logic, and ends a governance-token distribution that was primarily captured by farming strategies. Instead, borrowing goes back to what it should be: simple access to credit to put capital to work, with full visibility.
Users can now borrow and lever with a clear understanding of the strategy’s cost and the net return expected at maturity. The only market variable to monitor is the bUSD0 discount on the secondary market if you choose to exit before maturity. Simpler. Clearer.
With UZR:
Borrowing costs are predictableProtocol fees are capped and transparentEconomic value accrues to the Usual DAO
There is no emissions-driven incentive loop. There is no rate volatility embedded in the core credit path. The system favors clarity over optimization theater.
This design aligns borrowing with use. It simplifies governance and risk evaluation. Credit exists because it is needed, not because it is subsidized.
Internalizing the credit lane
A base layer for future credit
Before UZR, borrowing demand was satisfied via external platforms. While effective, that structure pushed fees and control outside the protocol.
UZR internalizes this function. Credit activity now happens within Usual’s economic perimeter via Fira. This has three implications.
First, protocol revenue remains internal.
Second, parameter control belongs to governance.
Third, future credit extensions can be built without relying on third-party incentives.
This is not a rejection of composability. It is a prerequisite.
UZR is a starting point, not an endpoint.
By establishing a native, zero-rate credit primitive, Usual lays the foundation for more expressive credit markets: fixed-rate instruments, maturity-based borrowing, and structured credit products. All of this becomes possible without re-architecting the base system.
Because the credit lane is protocol-owned, extensions can be added progressively and governed coherently.
A key shift: bUSD0 as a zero-coupon bond
UZR simplifies the system by reframing bUSD0 as a maturity instrument: a zero-coupon bond that moves from discount to par.
Concretely, this delivers:
A cleaner structureA tighter link between borrowing demand, liquidity, and value captureLess reliance on mechanisms that historically created indirect market pressure via misaligned incentives
Credit becomes a tighter loop: usage stays inside, and beneficial effects accumulate inside.
UZR Launch: what you need to know
Progressive liquidity deployment in tranches
UZR is rolling out progressively. Liquidity will be added in tranches, not all at once.
The goal is to ensure a stable rollout and reduce risk during the first days of operation.
Wednesday, January 14, 2026: UZR opens with an initial liquidity trancheThrough Sunday evening, January 18: additional tranches are added regularly and announced through our usual communication channelsStarting Monday, January 19: liquidity scales based on migration demand
Each new tranche will be communicated publicly. Some tranches may fill quickly, and additional tranches will be added as needed.
Euler to Fira migration
Migration is available immediately, but it is one-way only.
Migration path: Euler to Fira onlyFira’s Borrow and Repay frontend features go live on Thursday, January 22, 2026Between now and January 22: users can migrate, but cannot yet borrow or repay via the Fira UI. Direct contract interaction is required during this window
USUAL rewards and the transition window
If liquidity is temporarily limited, users will not be penalized.
USUAL rewards on USL remain active until Monday, January 19, 2026The final distribution follows the usual scheduleOn Euler, the interest rate remains unchanged at 1.5%
In practice, even if migration is gradual, users continue earning rewards on USL until the final distribution.
Who is UZR for?
UZR is built for anyone who wants to use USD0 as working capital, not just as a passive holding.
Deploy capital without embedding rate speculation into the core credit pathRun maturity-based strategies with a simple, transparent cost modelAccess credit that is native to the Usual ecosystem, with coherent governance
As always in DeFi, outcomes depend on your position, collateral, and market conditions, especially if you exit before maturity via secondary markets.
Transparency and risks
UZR simplifies the credit lane, but it does not remove risks inherent to DeFi:
Smart contract riskLiquidation risk depending on your collateral and position designLiquidity and price risk on secondary markets (bUSD0 discount)Operational risk during a progressive rollout period
Usual’s goal is to build finance-grade rails that are readable, governable, and extensible, with a controlled ramp-up.
Conclusion
Usual Zero Rate marks a structural milestone: shifting USD0 from a settlement asset to a capital asset, supported by a native, zero-rate credit primitive.
Zero rate. Maturity-based clarity. Coherent governance. Value captured inside the ecosystem.
This is a foundation, and the base layer on which Usual can build increasingly expressive credit markets without losing what matters most: clarity and alignment.

Check out the migrator here: app.fira.money/migrate

Usual didn’t start by building a lending market. It started by building a stable asset with a clear promise: make dollars onchain usable, scalable, and aligned with the people who rely on them.
But “usable” isn’t a slogan. It’s a property. And in practice, that property is won or lost in one place: credit.
If you can’t borrow against what you hold, you don’t really own flexibility; you own a parked balance. If you can, your USD0 becomes something else: a spending asset, a liquidity buffer, a working capital tool. Credit is the bridge between value and utility. It’s also the layer where a protocol either becomes infrastructure, or stays a token.
That’s the context for Usual Zero Rate.
Why Usual Zero Rate exists
Until now, Usual’s core borrowing lane has lived on external rails. It worked, and that matters: it proved that users wanted a simple trade, post bUSD0, borrow USD0, keep your position intact and your capital liquid.
But the more this lane becomes a core habit, the more obvious the strategic mismatch becomes. When the credit engine sits elsewhere, the protocol is effectively renting a piece of its own future: paying fees outward, inheriting external constraints, and leaving its most important product surface dependent on someone else’s priorities.
Usual Zero Rate is the decision to stop renting.
It’s a narrative shift as much as a product launch: moving the credit lane back under Usual-owned infrastructure, so the system can capture its own economics, control its own roadmap, and build the foundation for what comes next. If Usual is serious about becoming a financial primitive, not just a stablecoin, then credit can’t be a third-party extension. It has to be part of the core.
The philosophy: remove complexity, not add it
The point of Usual Zero Rate is not to introduce complexity. It’s to remove it.
The experience is meant to feel familiar: borrow USD0 against bUSD0, without forcing anyone to migrate or breaking what already exists.
But the philosophy tightens. The market is designed around predictability and governance clarity: a deliberate “zero rate” posture, paired with a small, capped fee that accrues to the DAO rather than leaking to external venues.
In other words, the lane is simple for users, and legible for the ecosystem. You know what you’re getting, and you know where the value goes.
Value capture is also responsibility
That value capture isn’t just about revenue. It’s about responsibility.
When you own the lane, you can make coherent product decisions across the stack: how credit should behave, what risk assumptions are acceptable, how incentives should, or should not, shape behavior.
And that’s where Usual Zero Rate connects to a deeper alignment choice already made at the DAO level: collateral used in these credit lanes shouldn’t be a perpetual emissions magnet. Credit should exist because it’s useful, not because it’s farmable.
Treating bUSD0 in these markets as a zero-coupon instrument, and making it ineligible for USUAL distribution, draws a clean line between utility and inflation. It’s a deliberate move toward sustainability: fewer reflexive emissions, clearer economics, and a stronger long-term foundation.
The long game
Zoom out, and Usual Zero Rate is a first brick in something larger.
Today, it’s a borrowing lane that feels like the one you already know. Tomorrow, it’s the backbone for maturity-based credit, fixed-rate markets, and the kind of financial plumbing you need if you actually want to build a neobank-like stack onchain.
You can’t build that future on borrowed infrastructure. You build it by owning the rails, earning the trust, and making the hard calls about alignment early, before scale makes them impossible.
Usual Zero Rate is one of those calls.
It says: Usual’s credit demand is real, and it belongs inside the Usual ecosystem. It says: the simplest user experience is the one where the protocol’s incentives are clean and the value loop closes back to the DAO. And it says: if we want to become durable infrastructure, we have to start acting like it, starting with the layer that turns a stable asset into a usable one.
That’s what Usual Zero Rate is really about. Not a new market for the sake of it. A strategic step toward owning the credit engine that makes USD0 more than a balance, and makes Usual more than a product.
To learn more, you can find the UIP-18 proposal regarding the launch of Usual Zero Rate Market by Usual DAO:
https://snapshot.box/#/s:usualmoney.eth/proposal/0x16dd10633ab146c51e8a6eae58be4b475560707fd694e82169286896170a3f11

DeFi did something extraordinary: it put credit onchain. Then it stopped.
Most onchain lending today is still spot credit. Rates float continuously, reacting to utilization, liquidity shifts, and leverage cycles. The moment market conditions change, visibility disappears. For traders, that volatility can be tolerated. For treasuries, institutions, and long-horizon allocators, it is a structural limitation.
In traditional finance, credit has a shape. It has maturities. It has term structure. It has fixed rates that allow capital to be planned, allocated, and underwritten over time.
Onchain credit has speed, composability, and transparency. What it lacks is maturity.

Fira exists to close that gap.

Fira, Fixed-rate rails for onchain finance
Building the onchain yield curve
Today, DeFi lending is floating by default: rates move with utilization and flows, with no maturities, no term structure, only a spot price of capital.

The consequences are simple:
Borrowers can’t lock their cost of funding.
Lenders can’t lock their returns.Treasuries can’t plan liabilities or manage duration.

In TradFi, it’s the opposite. Markets are organized by maturities because time has a price.
Fira starts from that premise: if DeFi wants to become a real financing layer, it must move from spot to maturity, from reactive rates to markets where you borrow and lend at a fixed rate for a defined duration, with continuous price discovery and real exit liquidity.
Fira makes time explicit. Maturity becomes the unit of organization. A yield curve can emerge onchain.
Guiding principle: Fira moves DeFi credit from spot lending to maturity markets: fixed rates, continuous liquidity, and an onchain yield curve.
Demand is already proven onchain
Fira isn’t inventing the need for rate certainty. It is formalizing it into a market.
Usual Stability Loan (USL) demonstrated clear demand for predictable financing: fixed-rate borrowing at 5%, used notably for delta-neutral strategies against variable yields. Since launch, USL has attracted >$400M of bUSD0 collateral in under 6 months.
That demand exists today. Fira turns it into maturity-based markets: rates by expiry, a term structure, and ultimately a yield curve.

Why fixed-rate protocols failed before (and why Fira is different)
Fixed-rate has existed in DeFi before. The problem wasn’t the concept of fixed rates.
It was market structure.
Historically, maturity-based designs suffered from:
Liquidity fragmentation (one pool per expiry),theoretical exits before maturity with practically illiquid markets, anddiscontinuous liquidity, dependent on incentives, matching, or episodic activity.
Fixed-rate credit requires two things at the same time:

continuous liquidity, andreal exit optionality.

That’s the core of Fira’s design: a maturity-native system built to support ongoing rate discovery and usable liquidity throughout the life of a position, not just at origination.

Why Fira is a protocol, not a feature
Fixed-rate credit cannot be bolted onto variable-rate systems without compromise.
Pricing term risk requires maturity segmentation, yield curves, and mechanisms designed around time, not just balances. These mechanics conflict with products optimized for instantaneous reallocation and perpetual floating exposure.
Fira had to be built as its own protocol, with maturity selection and fixed-rate discovery at the core. That separation is intentional: it keeps Fira rate-native, while remaining modular and composable within broader DeFi stacks.
The link with Usual
Usual aims to become a full onchain neobank. In fintech, credit is inseparable from the core business.
Fira adds the missing credit layer to Usual’s architecture:
Usual provides capital and balance-sheet primitives.
Fira provides maturity markets: fixed rates, term structure, and predictable funding.
Together, they form a complete onchain credit stack, simple enough for end users, precise enough for treasuries and institutions.

From Labs to DAO: infrastructure ownership
Fira was developed by Usual Labs as core infrastructure for Usual’s long-term roadmap.

UIP-17 asks the Usual DAO to acquire the infrastructure and the IP developed for Fira.
In line with the principles outlined in UIP-15, core infrastructure and associated revenues developed by the Labs are intended to be owned by the Usual DAO and accrue to USUAL stakeholders. Governance of Fira, parameters, risk frameworks, market listings, incentives, will be decided by the USUAL DAO.
This is not a spin-out. It is an extension of Usual’s architecture, with ownership and direction anchored in governance.
Usual Zero Rate as a first market
Usual Zero Rate is the first step toward rate certainty. By abstracting yield volatility away from the user, it introduces predictability at the product level, allowing users to earn without managing rate exposure directly.
Fira will routes credit activity through Usual-owned infrastructure, restoring attribution and strategic control. It reduces fee leakage and dependency risk by relying less on third-party venues and their shifting parameters. And it builds the fixed-rate credit backbone needed to support future products across the neobank stack.
A long-term vision: building toward a bank
Banks exist to transform capital across time. They convert short-term deposits into long-term loans. They manage duration, liabilities, and rate exposure
None of that is possible without fixed-rate, maturity-based credit markets.
An onchain financial system that aspires to be bank-like must eventually solve the same problem.
Fira enables duration-aware credit, treasury-grade planning, and institutional participation. It helps Usual move from yield products toward balance-sheet primitives capable of supporting long-term financial infrastructure.
Why now
DeFi is maturing, but meaningful participation requires predictability. Fixed-rate credit is not a bull-market feature. It is a maturity-market requirement.
Launching Fira now positions Usual ahead of the next credit cycle: focused on infrastructure over incentives, aligned with long-term scalability, and built to make onchain finance legible across time.
Fira is the missing layer.
And this is just the beginning.

Vote on UIP-17 here:
https://snapshot.box/#/s:usualmoney.eth/proposal/0x75ac2e8fdeaa8c54c661a43e95bbabfe029859a3b08a89c66b0e02bb4c8e5a5b

Usual's governance process deploys upgrades in clearly defined stages. UIP-16 follows this approach.
This proposal aims to add U0R (Usual Zero Rate Vault) as eligible collateral for USD0 on Ethereum mainnet. Its objective is strictly technical and preparatory: UIP-16 does not introduce a new product at this stage and does not finalize a broader infrastructure transition. It represents an intermediate step.
As a reminder, following the DAO vote to reduce USUAL inflation during UIP-11, governance set the USL rate to 0% and stopped USUAL emissions for bUSD0 deposited as USL collateral.
We are therefore proposing a technical UIP to introduce U0R as new USD0 collateral, via a dedicated infrastructure, deployed alongside USL: the Usual Zero Rate Module (UZR), with an explicit property: a 0% rate.
UZR will coexist with the current USL on Euler: nothing is replaced, nothing is imposed. Users will be able to choose to remain on the current system or to migrate.
Why this UIP (context)
This technical UIP precedes a forthcoming UIP that will propose the complete new infrastructure.It is necessary to unlock essential tests (security, integrations, on-chain behavior, user flows) before a broader deployment.The objective is to reduce risk and validate technical assumptions before submitting the final migration and target architecture to governance.

Before submitting a complete infrastructure proposal, the protocol must validate the behavior of this configuration under real conditions. UIP-16 opens this testing phase by authorizing U0R as eligible collateral for USD0.
The proposed change does not modify USD0's risk framework, monetary policy, or collateral philosophy. It allows testing, in a controlled manner, collateral flows, accounting, and integrations, before a separate proposal that will detail the complete infrastructure design.
In this sense, UIP-16 is a prerequisite: it creates the necessary conditions to collect on-chain data, validate assumptions, and reduce risk, before requesting DAO approval for a broader architectural change.
A detailed technical description of the future infrastructure will be submitted to governance soon.

Here's a link to the proposal: https://snapshot.box/#/s:usualmoney.eth/proposal/0x2a5956511f74a948f523295af642378d0f57e1904c87b17e62c1c2ae2b827761

UIP-15 is a clarity and maturity vote. It settles real 2024–2025 obligations cleanly, then locks in the end state: the DAO is the single center of authority and value, the Foundation executes legally on the DAO’s behalf, and the protocol IP transitions to DAO ownership on a defined timeline. Going forward, development is no longer implicit; it must be explicitly mandated, scoped, budgeted, and reported.

As the Usual protocol moves further into DAO-led governance, it becomes necessary to formalise certain arrangements that were established before the DAO was fully operational.
UIP-15 is a proposal for institutional clarity. It starts from a simple observation: a protocol does not decentralize through intention, but through explicit rules. As long as ownership, flows, and mandates remain partly implicit, governance becomes a matter of interpretation, and therefore friction. UIP-15 aims for the opposite: to make the system legible, and therefore governable.
The first principle is continuity and responsibility. UIP-15 addresses 2024–2025 obligations that already exist under current agreements and real operational costs advanced to keep the system running. The point is not to “choose” an economic reality, but to settle it cleanly. Refusing to settle does not make the obligation disappear; it increases legal uncertainty, reputational strain, and operational risk. A mature protocol pays what it owes precisely so the past cannot become leverage over the future.
The second principle is unity of ownership. UIP-15 states a clear political thesis: value must be concentrated in a single sovereign entity, the DAO. This does not mean there are no execution bodies; it means final authority over the protocol’s trajectory, system assets, and decision rights must be unambiguous. The Foundation is a legal executor: it allows the DAO to act in the real world without confusing governance with a commercial operator. This separation is not cosmetic; it is a robustness requirement. It prevents the ability to sign, pay, or hold rights from becoming an independent political power.
The third principle is intellectual property aligned with decentralization. As long as the protocol IP is not held by the DAO, via its legal executor, there is a gap between who governs and who owns. UIP-15 locks in a direction and a deadline: transferring the protocol IP to the DAO. The objective is not to multiply agreements, but to make transitional arrangements, such as licensing, disappear over time by converging on a coherent end state: the protocol belongs to the DAO; the DAO mandates and funds development; and the outputs become system assets.
Finally, UIP-15 sets a governance norm for what comes next: pay for delivery, not for existence. In other words, any relationship between the DAO and any development entity must be structured around an explicit mandate, a defined scope, a validated budget, and reporting. This is not a stance against anyone; it is a design rule that mechanically reduces gray areas, and therefore conflicts.
In substance, UIP-15 is not a story. It is a mechanism: settle the past to remove governance liabilities, concentrate authority where it belongs, and align ownership, IP, with sovereignty, the DAO. These are not flashy decisions, but they are exactly what makes a protocol durable.
For more details please check out the full UIP Proposal here: https://snapshot.box/#/s:usualmoney.eth/proposal/0x73dd2059a794acb720695668a3dd9421f9fa7d0870da3e8a019c66015b512d7d

UIP-9 introduced a long-term buyback framework grounded in capital discipline and sustainability. Rather than relying on one-off actions, the goal was to establish a repeatable process funded by protocol activity and aligned with the protocol’s maturity over time.
As we close the year, this is a brief check-in on how that program has progressed.
Over Q3 and Q4 2025, buybacks were executed continuously off-chain, with USUAL acquired through market purchases and later transferred from centralized venues to the DAO treasury. These transfers were not performed on a transaction-by-transaction basis. Instead, tokens were withdrawn in batches and moved to the DAO wallet as custody was consolidated.

As a result, the on-chain record reflects the movement of tokens into the DAO wallet rather than the precise timing of individual buyback executions.
Across sixteen weeks, approximately $4.7 million was deployed through the buyback program, resulting in 86.5 million USUAL acquired. These figures reflect completed buybacks during the period. Any USUAL that remains temporarily on centralized exchanges is not included in these totals and will be reflected once transferred.
During this window, the DAO was also able to take advantage of market dislocations, including the October 10 flash crash, to execute buybacks under favorable conditions. As with the rest of the program, these purchases were made as part of an ongoing strategy rather than as isolated actions.
For transparency, tokens transferred to the DAO are visible at the following treasury address: https://etherscan.io/address/0xe3FD5A2cA538904A9e967CBd9e64518369e5a03f

A more detailed breakdown of the buyback program, including aggregated figures and timelines, is available on Dune for those who wish to explore further.
Buybacks are one component of a broader focus on sustainability, capital discipline, and long-term growth. UIP-9 was designed to support that direction, and this year’s execution reflects a measured, ongoing approach as the protocol continues to mature.

Strengthening USD0’s resilience today, preparing tomorrow’s FX liquidity rails
As Usual moves into a more mature phase, one principle remains non-negotiable: a stablecoin system must be resilient by design. For USD0, that resilience comes from two things above all: the quality of its collateral and the protocol’s ability to avoid concentration risk as adoption grows.
UIP-14 proposes a simple, deliberate change: making USTBL (Spiko US T-Bills Money Market Fund) an eligible collateral asset for USD0. The goal is not to expand the collateral set for optics, but to reinforce USD0’s foundations with an additional, high-quality source of collateral aligned with Usual’s standards of transparency and risk discipline.
Why USTBL fits USD0’s collateral philosophy
USD0 was built in opposition to opaque models where users are asked to trust collateral they can’t properly verify. Usual’s approach is the inverse: collateral must be legible, priced transparently, and governed conservatively.
USTBL provides exposure to short-term U.S. Treasuries through a regulated fund structure. In practice, this introduces a collateral type that is typically associated with defensiveness and predictable behavior, especially compared with more reflexive or liquidity-fragile assets. Just as importantly, its valuation framework is compatible with the protocol’s expectations: pricing is anchored to a Chainlink NAV feed, normalized to match Usual’s risk and accounting standards.
The strategic point: resilience now, FX infrastructure next
The immediate benefit of UIP-14 is straightforward: diversification. As the system scales, resilience is not only about picking good collateral, it is also about avoiding excessive dependence on a single source, pathway, or market structure.
But UIP-14 also fits into a larger strategic direction. Usual’s roadmap increasingly points toward a multi-currency stablecoin ecosystem where USD0 and EUR0 can coexist with deeper, more reliable liquidity. Building that future requires credible rails for primary-market FX liquidity, not only secondary-market trading. Strengthening the USD-side collateral base with an instrument like USTBL is a concrete first step toward that endgame: a more efficient, governed DeFi infrastructure capable of supporting robust EUR0 ↔ USD0 liquidity over time.
Conclusion
UIP-14 is a governance decision that compounds with every previous one. By adding USTBL as eligible collateral, the community strengthens USD0’s ability to scale while staying faithful to the principles that define Usual: transparent valuation, conservative risk management, and long-term resilience.

Read more on this here: https://snapshot.box/#/s:usualmoney.eth/proposal/0x65f80603d96f3eea5e0dab47d86fda035cbce06a38caa3c7f3a937b78e350fc0