Khi stablecoin không còn sinh lời: 7 giao thức DeFi hưởng lợi từ Đạo luật CLARITY

Original Author: Tindorr

Original Translation Compiled by: Chopper, Foresight News

The entire market is watching the regulatory jurisdiction battle between the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), debating which altcoins qualify as "digital commodities." This is merely a surface-level interpretation, one that has already been priced into the market.

The real profit logic of the CLARITY Act lies elsewhere: the bill quietly defines the legal boundaries of DeFi activities that institutions can conduct; concurrently, under strong lobbying from banks, it directly blocks the mainstream channel for ordinary users to earn passive income from idle stablecoins.

This will not only trigger a new wave of institutional capital entering DeFi but also force a massive influx of capital into specific protocols that have already established compliant frameworks.

Below are the 7 main projects I have identified that stand to benefit.

30-Second Summary of the CLARITY Act

The bill passed the House of Representatives in July 2025 (with 294 votes in favor, 134 against); it entered the Senate Banking Committee's review stage on May 14, 2026 (Editor's note: On May 14, the CLARITY Act was voted through the Senate Banking Committee).

Here's the core content of CLARITY in two sentences:

• Clarifies the division of regulatory power between the SEC and CFTC, placing digital commodities under CFTC jurisdiction;
• Establishes safe harbor rules for DeFi protocols, node validators, and open-source developers, preventing them from being simply classified as money transmitters or brokers.

The most crucial part of this article is Section 404 regarding stablecoin yields: The GENIUS Act, which took effect in the US last year, prohibits stablecoin issuers from directly paying interest to users; however, exchanges, DeFi platforms, and intermediaries could still offer financial yields on users' idle funds.

Why the CLARITY Act's Impact Goes Beyond DeFi Legalization

Once the CLARITY Act is formally enacted, it will immediately trigger two major shifts:

• Removing barriers for institutional capital entry. BlackRock, Apollo, Deutsche Bank, pension funds, corporate treasuries, etc., have been waiting on the sidelines. Compliance teams couldn't assess whether related assets were securities, preventing large-scale allocation. Now, with CFTC's clear jurisdiction and the DeFi safe harbor, institutions can finally enter in a big way.
• Profit-seeking capital will exit idle stablecoin yield products. The era of simply depositing USDC on an exchange and earning ~5% annualized yield passively will disappear. Hundreds of billions in capital seeking stable returns must find new allocation outlets.

Consequently, two massive capital flows (institutional investors finally entering + retail investors seeking yield) will converge on the same type of targets: compliant products with real business use cases and structured yield generation.

The protocols below are precisely tailored for this new regulatory landscape.

Pendle: The Underlying Yield Infrastructure Layer

Pendle is the DeFi protocol best suited to the CLARITY Act. It can split any yield-bearing asset into a Principal Token (PT) and a Yield Token (YT): Holding PT locks in a fixed annualized yield; holding YT allows betting on yield fluctuations. This entire process involves active trading and providing liquidity – a business activity, not merely passively holding tokens and collecting interest.

Before the Act: Institutions recognized its product mechanism but were constrained by regulatory ambiguity, unable to participate at scale; Tokenized Real-World Assets (RWA) remained in pilots or offshore wrappers; whether PT/YT tokens were securities was legally unclear.

After the Act: PT/YT trading is clearly classified under CFTC's commodity derivatives regulation; the ban on passive stablecoin yields forces massive capital flows into such active yield products; large asset managers like BlackRock can custody tokenized RWAs and private credit assets, using Pendle to offer clients on-chain fixed-income exposure.

Example: The Apollo Credit Fund ACRED, tokenized via Securitize and wrapped by the Ember protocol into eACRED, went live on Pendle in April 2026. Holding PT-eACRED provides one-click exposure to Apollo's entire credit portfolio, encompassing corporate direct lending, asset-backed lending, senior credit, distressed credit, structured credit, etc. All products are composable and operate entirely on-chain.

Once the CLARITY Act is enacted, this model will become the standard template for US institutional capital entry, and Pendle will serve as the core yield infrastructure for new institutional liquidity.

Key metrics to watch: RWA asset pool Total Value Locked (TVL), progress of cooperation with compliant custodians, issuance scale of tokenized asset PTs.

Morpho: On-Chain Prime Broker

Morpho specializes in permissionless lending markets with customizable risk parameters.

Before the Act: Using tokenized RWAs as collateral for loans carried the risk of being deemed an unregistered derivative; lacked pools with custodial qualifications meeting institutional risk standards; liquidation and oracle risks deterred large capital.

After the Act: Strategy firms like Gauntlet and Steakhouse can establish compliant permissioned pools with custom loan-to-value ratios, oracles, position limits, and KYC requirements; institutions can borrow against RWAs using stablecoins, execute leveraged loop arbitrage, and provide market liquidity, all within the CFTC's clear regulatory framework. Stablecoin capital squeezed out of passive yield markets will continuously flow into Morpho pools to earn compliant yields through active lending.

The on-chain prime broker model will formally launch and operate. Stablecoin capital displaced from passive yield products will consistently flow into Morpho pools, generating compliant returns through active lending activities.

Key metrics to watch: TVL in pools managed by institutional strategy providers, new categories of RWA collateral, number of new institutional strategy partnerships launched.

Sky (USDS / sUSDS)

Sky (formerly MakerDAO) allows users to deposit USDS and receive sUSDS, earning protocol yields derived from stability fees, reserve asset treasury yields, and RWA allocation returns. Sky is arguably the DeFi protocol closest to a tokenized money market fund.

The question is: does depositing USDS for sUSDS constitute an active business activity, or is it the passive "lazy earning" restricted by the ban?

Sky has been following Ethena's path, partnering with compliant institutions to build a compliant framework. If regulators adopt a lenient interpretation of the "active business exemption," sUSDS could become one of the largest compliant on-chain yield-bearing instruments, inherently carrying RWA asset exposure.

The stablecoin yield ban will directly drive capital from idle USDC towards USDS-linked savings products.

Key metric to watch: Rulemaking by the Treasury and CFTC following the bill's passage.

Maple Finance: On-Chain Credit Trading Desk

Maple Finance focuses on institutional lending pools. Users deposit stablecoins as lenders, while borrowers are thoroughly vetted institutions (market makers, hedge funds, institutional treasuries); its Syrup pool opens access to regular users.

Before the Act: Under-collateralized institutional lending carried the compliance risk of being classified as an unregistered security; banks and insurance companies were unable to participate compliantly due to unclear regulatory classification; after early default events in pools, compliance teams generally adopted a wait-and-see approach.

After the Act: Maple formally transitions into a compliant on-chain credit asset issuance platform; banks and insurance institutions can participate without hurdles.

Maple already possesses institution-friendly attributes: The Syrup pool is integrated with Morpho, enabling cross-protocol credit portfolio allocation. Bitwise and Sky had already allocated to Maple strategies before the Act.

The CLARITY Act merely removes the regulatory constraints limiting its ability to scale.

Key metrics to watch: Total Syrup pool TVL, diversification progress of institutional borrowers, launch of new credit strategies for RWA asset originators.

Centrifuge: The Native RWA Asset Issuance Layer

If Pendle handles yield splitting and Maple manages credit pools, Centrifuge sits further upstream – at the source of real-world asset tokenization. Private credit, commercial paper, structured credit tranches, and SME loans can all be wrapped into on-chain tokens, seamlessly integrating with the entire DeFi ecosystem.

Before the Act: Tokenization of real-world credit assets remained experimental; the classification of tokens – security, commodity, or entirely new category – was ambiguous, deterring institutions; underlying assets lacked federal-level custodial and settlement rules; most pools had limited scale, operating only through offshore structures.

After the Act: Centrifuge becomes the core gateway for RWA tokenization; the regulatory classification of tokenized private credit tranches is clarified, allowing them to be compliantly custodied and used as large-scale institutional loan collateral; banks and asset managers can participate on-chain in SME financing, commercial paper discounting, and structured credit – real economic activities – without needing offshore structures.

Protocols Based on STRC Assets: A Pathway for Fixed Income

Strategy issued perpetual preferred shares (STRC), listed on Nasdaq, with an annualized dividend yield of approximately 11.5%, and monthly adjustments to maintain the stock price near its $100 par value. Apyx and Saturn Credit are two major STRC wrapping protocols: Apyx issues apxUSD and apyUSD (total supply over $400 million); Saturn issues USDat and sUSDat; both have launched PT/YT trading markets on Pendle.

Before the Act: The entire business pathway was established, but compliant US funds could not custody, restructure, or repackage these wrapped assets at scale.

After the Act: PT trading falls under CFTC commodity regulation, and the DeFi safe harbor protects protocol compliance; large US compliant funds can batch purchase PT tokens related to Apyx and Saturn, locking in approximately 12-month fixed yields, and then package them through traditional brokerage channels into fixed-income products for retail investors.

The complete flow is: Strategy issues STRC → Apyx/Saturn wraps the dividend yield on-chain → Pendle splits it into PT (principal) and YT (yield) tokens → US compliant funds purchase large amounts of PT to lock in fixed yields → packaged as "Bitcoin-linked fixed-income products (~12% APY)" for retail investors.

Key metrics to watch: TVL of related PT tokens, whether US compliant funds launch STRC-linked fixed-income products, STRC monthly dividend adjustment status.

The Common Logic of the Seven Protocols

Stepping back, a unifying pattern among the seven protocols emerges:

• These protocols proactively built in KYC compliance and business-use-case architecture before regulatory pressure forced it.
• CFTC jurisdiction allocation + DeFi safe harbor completely removes the biggest securities classification risk for institutions.
• The stablecoin passive yield ban channels massive capital flows towards these structured, real-business, RWA-backed products.
• Institutions will naturally become the承接方, seamlessly overlaying their existing custody and prime broker infrastructure onto these DeFi protocols.

Considerations and Caveats

• The Act is not yet final. It has only passed committee review and still needs to go through processes like merging House and Senate versions, surpassing the 60-vote threshold in the Senate, reconciling text between chambers, and presidential signature. Prediction market Polymarket gives it a 76% probability of enactment in 2026 – high, but not a certainty.
• All protocols carry inherent DeFi risks, including smart contract vulnerabilities, oracle failures, stablecoin de-pegging, and counterparty credit risk. CLARITY only clarifies regulatory boundaries, it does not eliminate investment risk.
• The "beneficial price increase" premise is that institutions will enter at the pace the market expects. While consensus is strong, actual implementation cycles are often slower than trading prices imply; onboarding institutions typically takes months.

Conclusion

The CLARITY Act is not just a simple "DeFi legalization" story. That's the surface narrative, already priced into the market.

The real second-order market logic is: When passive stablecoin yields are banned, where will the massive pools of profit-seeking capital flow? Which protocols and sectors are ready to absorb incremental institutional capital without needing temporary compliance overhauls? This does not guarantee that these protocols' tokens will necessarily rise in price; tokenomics still need independent analysis.