M^0, an EVM protocol for stablecoin coordination, has expanded to Solana, the team told Lightspeed exclusively.
M^0’s (pronounced Em-Zero) first Solana user will be Kast, a platform offering banking-like services with stablecoins. The move comes as various and sundry actors bring new stablecoins to market, and M^0 hopes to unify the increasingly fragmented sector.
At a basic level, M^0 offers a stablecoin “building block” called $M — a kind of vanilla stable backed by US T-bills. Clients who want to launch their stablecoin effectively wrap $M and can customize things like yield or custody.
$M’s first user was the Cosmos ecosystem app Noble, which made use of the infrastructure when launching the yield-bearing USDN stablecoin. It also paired with RWA stablecoin outfit Usual to launch UsualM.
M^0’s latest partner in Kast plans to offer two Solana stablecoins: a payments and a savings one. The tokens, the names of which have not been finalized, will eventually be able to be swapped for other $M stablecoins on Solana and bridged to other ecosystems via Wormhole.
To my mind, the M^0 model sounds a bit like white label stablecoins — a concept Kast has also made use of through its Solana validator partnership with Kiln. And white label stablecoins make a lot of sense, given how everyone from the Wyoming state government to President Trump-backed World Liberty Financial wants to have a stablecoin.
In an interview, M^0 chief strategy officer Joao Reginatto said “a couple of other companies” will be leveraging $M to build stablecoins on Solana.
But despite all the buzz, the stablecoin landscape remains pretty duopolistic. 76% of all stablecoins on Solana are Circle’s USDC, and another 18% are Tether’s USDT, according to DeFiLlama. M^0’s clients will hope to unseat Circle — and Solana might hope one of them can do so.
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